Michael F. Atiyah (1929–2019) Mathematician Who Transformed the Fields He Brought Together
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COMMENT OBITUARY Michael F. Atiyah (1929–2019) Mathematician who transformed the fields he brought together. lite mathematical research trans- ranged over vast conceptual expanses in a formed in the second half of the dazzling and demanding experience of the- twentieth century. Capitalizing on ory in motion. Enew opportunities for international collabo- Atiyah’s return to Oxford coincided with ration, superstar theorists sought ambitious new interactions with theoretical physi- syntheses across intellectual domains at cists, with whom he linked index theory new heights of abstraction. At the vanguard to emerging perspectives in quantum of jet-age mathematics was Michael Francis physics. A prolific researcher, networker CAMBRIDGE TRINITY COLLEGE Atiyah, who died on 11 January. Winner of and advocate, he forged multifarious ties the Fields Medal and the Abel Prize, and a between the frontiers of mathematics and president of the Royal Society in London, physics. His efforts also helped to reshape Atiyah breathed life into research sites and the mathematics and physics professions. partnerships with an unchecked zeal for the Later generations of scholars could attain social life of theorizing. His conversations recognition as elite mathematicians for reshaped the fields from which he drew. work on quantum physics, and they could Specializing in algebraic geometry and claim elite contributions to physics from topology, the study of shapes and their the recesses of mathematical theory. transformations, Atiyah made his greatest Around this time Atiyah also began tak- contributions through dialogue with lead- ing on more formal positions in national ing researchers who had complementary and international organizations, including expertise. Two of his early collaborations reported to his funders, “the innumerable presidencies of the London Mathematical resulted in K-theory and index theory, conversations, carried on at all times of day” Society and the Mathematical Association exemplars of his generation’s new breed of were the highlight of his fellowship. New in Leicester, UK. In 1990, he became Master interdisciplinarity. Subsequent collabora- IAS friends included Friedrich Hirzebruch, of Trinity College and the inaugural director tions straddled the theoretical extremities of Raoul Bott and Isadore Singer, who would of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathemati- mathematics and physics, relating intricate later become partners in his highest-profile cal Sciences in Cambridge. symmetries to the fundamental properties collaborations. From 1990 to 1995, he was president of the of matter. Later, presiding over learned soci- In a system that rewarded networking and Royal Society in London, where he relished eties and institutions, he promoted the same international collaboration, Atiyah shone the historic social rituals, pursued inter- values of cooperation and internationalism brightly. Next came a lectureship at Cam- national ties and pugnaciously advocated that defined his research. bridge, then a readership at the University for British science funding. His farewell Born in London in 1929 to a British artist of Oxford in 1961 that led to the Savilian address championed internationalism and mother and a Lebanese father who worked in Professorship of Geometry, also at Oxford, denounced the military–industrial com- the British colonial civil service, Atiyah was in 1963. With Hirzebruch and Bott, Atiyah plex and nuclear arms, on which he blamed raised between Sudan and England before developed striking algebraic methods to half a century of relative British decline. He excelling at boarding school in Cairo. He describe and interrelate complex contortions continued this stance as president of the emerged as a formidable young mathema- of multidimensional shapes. nuclear-arms-opposing Pugwash Confer- tician at the Manchester Grammar School His meteoric ascent was recognized by ences on Science and World Affairs after his and — after a brief period of national service a Fields Medal in 1966, the first year the retirement from Cambridge in 1997. — Trinity College at the University of Cam- award was designated for the most out- Based thereafter in Edinburgh, UK, bridge, UK. He stayed there for his doctorate standing mathematicians under 40 — as his wife’s home town, Atiyah remained an under W. V. D. Hodge, a geometer active in it has been ever since. By then, Atiyah active researcher, scientific ambassador and international mathematical organizations. had already announced his most famous omnivorous intellectual provocateur. From Hodge exposed Atiyah to a cosmopolitan result, the Atiyah–Singer Index Theorem, 2005 to 2008, he took a turn as president of panorama of emerging theories and sup- for which he and Singer would share the the Royal Society of Edinburgh. ported his career-defining application for a second-ever Abel Prize in 2004. Over dec- Throughout his career, Atiyah employed Commonwealth fund fellowship for postdoc- ades of collaboration, the two continued to freewheeling conversation as a power- toral research at the Institute for Advanced probe the links between the mathematics ful instrument for crafting mathematical Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey. of static shapes, Atiyah’s speciality, and that alliances. By leadership and example, he Newly wed to mathematician Lily Brown, of dynamic flows, Singer’s. helped to define an era in which the world who gave up her position at Bedford College From 1969 to 1972, Atiyah was a pro- of mathematics became dramatically more London to join him in Princeton, Atiyah fessor at the IAS until family considera- interconnected. ■ spent 1955–56 in the exhilarating company tions drew him back to Oxford in the early of many of the world’s most accomplished 1970s as a Royal Society research professor. Michael J. Barany is a lecturer in the history young mathematicians. A contemporary Atiyah mentored many advanced students of science at the University of Edinburgh recalled him being “everywhere, bursting and early-career researchers, formally and and studies the globalization of modern with ideas”. He bounced between semi- informally. Interlocutors learnt to brace mathematics. nars and teas that lasted for hours. As he themselves for energetic exchanges that e-mail: [email protected] 40 | NATURE | VOL 566 | 7 FEBRUARY 2019 ©2019 Spri nger Nature Li mited. All ri ghts reserved. .