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Robert MacPherson (mathematician)

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American mathematician For other people named Robert Macpherson (or MacPherson), see Robert Macpherson (disambiguation).
Robert MacPherson
MacPherson at Oberwolfach in 2008
Born (1944-05-25) May 25, 1944 (age 80)
Lakewood, Ohio
NationalityAmerican
Alma materSwarthmore College
Harvard University
Known forIntersection homology
AwardsNAS Award in Mathematics (1992)
Leroy P. Steele Prize (2002)
Heinz Hopf Prize (2009)
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Brown University
Princeton University
Doctoral advisorRaoul Bott
Doctoral studentsMark Goresky
David Nadler
Julianna Tymoczko
Kari Vilonen
Zhiwei Yun

Robert Duncan MacPherson (born May 25, 1944) is an American mathematician at the Institute for Advanced Study.

Early life and education

Robert Duncan MacPherson was born in Lakewood, Ohio on May 25, 1944.

He received his bachelor's degree from Swarthmore College in 1966. MacPherson received his PhD from Harvard in 1970 with a thesis, written under the direction of Raoul Bott, entitled Singularities of Maps and Characteristic Classes.

Career

MacPherson was at Brown University as a J. D. Tamarkin Instructor from 1970 to 1972, an assistant professor from 1972 to 1974, an associate professor from 1974 to 1977, and then a professor from 1977 to 1987. He was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1987 to 1994. He became a professor of mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1994, later becoming named a Hermann Weyl Professor. He retired and became a professor emeritus 2018.

His notable doctoral students include Mark Goresky, David Nadler, Julianna Tymoczko, Kari Vilonen, and Zhiwei Yun.

Research

MacPherson and Goresky introduced intersection homology. He also worked on arithmetic groups, in particular on Siegel modular threefolds with Mark McConnell and on compactifications of symmetric spaces with Lizhen Ji.

Honors and awards

In 1983, MacPherson gave a plenary address at the International Congress of Mathematicians.

In 1992, MacPherson was awarded the NAS Award in Mathematics from the National Academy of Sciences. In 2002, he and Goresky were awarded the Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research by the American Mathematical Society. In 2009 he received the Heinz Hopf Prize from ETH Zurich.

In 2012, he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. He is also a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He received honorary doctorates from the University of Lille in 1993 and Brown University in 1994.

Personal

MacPherson's PhD advisee, Mark Goresky, later became his life partner. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, they were instrumental in channeling aid to Russian mathematicians, especially many who had to hide their sexuality.

Selected publications

References

  1. ^ "Curriculum Vitae". Robert D. MacPherson. Retrieved May 14, 2024.
  2. ^ Robert MacPherson at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  3. ^ "Robert D. MacPherson". Simons Foundation.
  4. Gunnells, Paul E. (2006). "Robert MacPherson and Arithmetic Groups". Pure and Applied Mathematics Quarterly. 2 (4): 1015–1052. arXiv:math/0603385. doi:10.4310/PAMQ.2006.v2.n4.a5.
  5. "NAS Award in Mathematics". National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved February 13, 2011.
  6. "Notices of the AMS 2002 p. 466" (PDF). ams.org.
  7. "List of Steele Prizes Seminal Contribution to Research". www.ams.org.
  8. List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society, retrieved February 2, 2013.

External links


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