Michael Atiyah

Sir Michael Francis Atiyah, OM, FRS, FRSE (born April 22, 1929) is a British mathematician, and one of the most influential mathematicians of the twentieth century. He grew up in Sudan and Egypt, and spent most of his academic life at Oxford, Cambridge, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He has been President of the Royal Society (1990–1995), Master of Trinity College, Cambridge (1990–1997), Chancellor of the University of Leicest... more

Sir Michael Francis Atiyah, OM, FRS, FRSE (born April 22, 1929) is a British mathematician, and one of the most influential mathematicians of the twentieth century. He grew up in Sudan and Egypt, and spent most of his academic life at Oxford, Cambridge, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He has been President of the Royal Society (1990–1995), Master of Trinity College, Cambridge (1990–1997), Chancellor of the University of Leicester (1995–2005), and President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2005–2008). He is currently retired and an honorary professor at the University of Edinburgh. He has had many mathematical collaborations, in particular with Raoul Bott, Friedrich Hirzebruch, and Isadore Singer, and his students include Graeme Segal, Nigel Hitchin, and Simon Donaldson. With Hirzebruch he founded topological K-theory, a major tool in algebraic topology, that describes the ways in which high dimensional space can be twisted. His best known result is the Atiyah... less