His former residence, Ningyuan (寧園), is still in campus of Nankai University, kept in the way when he was living there. (Doctor of Science, which is equivalent to PhD) degree in February, 1936. “Whenever we had to go to the chancellor to make some special request, we always took Chern along, and it always worked,” says Berkeley mathematician Rob Kirby. [37], In 2011 ZALA films published a documentary titled Taking the Long View: the Life of Shiing-shen Chern (山長水遠). Advanced Topics in Mathematical Physics, Fall 2010. will be offered instead. [5] He knew all these papers on simple Lie groups, Lie algebras, all by heart. The MSRI also set up a Chern Professorship, funded by Chern's children May and Paul as well as James Simons.[36]. During that time, Hua was studying at the University of Cambridge in Britain. [30] His research on Finsler geometry is continued through Tian Gang, Paul C. Yang, and Sun-Yung Alice Chang of Princeton University. He studied projective differential geometry under Sun Guangyuan, a University of Chicago-trained geometer and logician who was also from Zhejiang. [17], Between 1943-1964 he was invited back to the IAS on several occasions. He made fundamental contributions to differential geometry and topology. [5], He studied with the well-known Austrian geometer Wilhelm Blaschke. During WW2, the US did not have much of a scene in geometry (which is why he chose to study in Germany). There have been three Chern Visiting Professors so far: Sir Michael Atiyah of the University of Cambridge (1996), Richard Stanley of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1997), and Friedrich Hirzebruch of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn (1998). By the end of 1948, Chern returned to the United States and IAS because of the Chinese Civil War. He was known for unifying geometric and topological methods to prove stunning new results. He has also received a more homegrown honor, the dream-turned-reality of an appreciative student of 30 years ago, who grew up in the Bay Area. Chern-Bott formula, Shiing-Shen Chern (/tʃɜːrn/; Chinese: 陳省身; pinyin: Chén Xǐngshēn, Mandarin: [tʂʰən.ɕiŋ.ʂən]; October 28, 1911 – December 3, 2004) was a Chinese-American mathematician and poet. In Yau's autobiography, he talks a lot about his advisor Chern. Chern's surname is a common Chinese surname which is now usually spelled Chen. If there is credit for my mathematical works, it will be hers as well as mine. The unusual spelling "Chern" is a transliteration in the old Gwoyeu Romatzyh (GR) romanization for Mandarin Chinese used in the early twentieth-century China. But he has said that given China's size, it naturally has a large talent pool of budding mathematicians. Along with Cartan, Chern is one of the mathematicians known for popularizing the use of differential forms in math and physics. He was the youngest academician elected (at age 37). [11][5][2] This period at the IAS was a turning point in career, having a major impact on mathematics, while fundamentally altering the course of differential geometry and algebraic geometry. The bulk partition function of pure Chern-Simons theory on a three-manifold is a state in the space of conformal blocks of the dual boundary RCFT, and therefore transforms non-trivially under the boundary modular group. The theory is named for Shiing-Shen Chern and James Harris Simons, co-authors of a 1974 paper entitled "Characteristic Forms and Geometric Invariants," from which the theory arose. Chern-Weil homomorphism In 1939, Chern married Shih-Ning Cheng, and the couple had two children, Paul and May. His wife, Shih-ning Cheng (Chinese: 鄭士寧; pinyin: Zhèng Shìníng), whom he married in 1939, died in 2000. A polyglot, he spoke German, French, English, Wu and Mandarin Chinese. In GR the spelling of his given name "Shiing-Shen" indicates a third tone for Shiing and a first tone for Shen, which are equivalent to the syllables "Xǐngshēn" in pinyin. Chern has 43 students, including Fields medalist Shing-Tung Yau, Nobel Prize winner Chen-Ning Yang; and over 1000 descendants. Chern never reached Beijing. At the same time, Chern was Chen-Ning Yang's teacher of undergraduate maths at Tsinghua. Sun is another mentor of Chern who is considered a founder of modern Chinese mathematics. Simons talks about Chern in his TED talk.[40]. Many of the countries' talented scientists died because of the Cultural Revolution, but with their support, Chern was able to revive mathematical research in China, producing a generation of influential Chinese mathematicians. Chern was largely responsible in making the US a leading research hub in the field, but he remained modest about his achievements, preferring to say that he is a man of 'small problems' rather than 'big views.'[5]. Information for Physics 511, Fall 2014. [sic]. He also had a daughter, May Chu (陳璞; Chén Pú), wife of the physicist Chu Ching-wu, and a son named Paul (陳伯龍; Chén Bólóng). The Shanghai Communiqué was issued by the United States and the People's Republic of China on February 27, 1972. Berkeley campus. [11] On Chern, Weil wrote:[18]. What makes differential forms such an ideal tool for studying local and global geometric properties (and for relating them to each other) is their two complementary aspects. NKIM was renamed the Chern Institute of Mathematics in 2004 after Chern's death. ... we seemed to share a common attitude towards such subjects, or towards mathematics in general; we were both striving to strike at the root of each question while freeing our minds from preconceived notions about what others might have regarded as the right or the wrong way of dealing with it. He was made an Honorary member of the Indian Mathematical Society in 1950. Chern went to Beijing to work at the Tsinghua University Department of Mathematics as a teaching assistant. Manfredo Do Carmo dedicated his book on Riemannian Geometry to Chern, his PhD advisor. [14], In 1934, Chern received a scholarship to study in the United States at Princeton and Harvard, but at the time he wanted to study geometry and Europe was the center for the maths and sciences. Uomini and his wife set up the Robert G. Uomini and Louise B. Bidwell Foundation to support an extended visit of an outstanding mathematician to the U.C. Chern's conjecture My election to the US National Academy of Sciences was a prime factor for my US citizenship.