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Sir Michael Atiyah

Sir Michael Atiyah was born in London in 1929. He was educated at Victoria College in Cairo, Manchester Grammar School and Cambridge University(PhD in Mathematics 1955).

His first posts were in Cambridge, but he then moved to Oxford and became Savilian Professor of Geometry. In 1969 he was appointed Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton before returning to Oxford as Royal Society Research Professor. In 1990 he went back to Cambridge as Master of Trinity College and Director of the newly formed Isaac Newton institute for Mathematical Science.

Sir Michael is a mathematician who works in the general area of Geometry, especially in topology, differential geometry and algebraic geometry. His work involves links with analysis and has found significant applications in modern physics. He has been active in encouraging interaction between mathematicians and theoretical physicists. His collected works in 6 volumes were published by Oxford University Press. He has had more than 50 research students of whom 6 have been elected as Fellows of the Royal Society

He was President of the Royal Society of London (1990-95), President of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, (1997-2002) and was elected President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in October 2005. From 1995-2005 he was Chancellor of the University of Leicester

He holds ‎honorary degrees from more than 30 universities (including Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, the American University of Beirut and the Lebanese University) and is a foreign member of ‎over 20 national academies including the French Academie des Sciences, the US National Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Sir Michael has received many medals and prizes including the Fields Medal in 1966 and the Abel Prize in 2004.

He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1983 and was made a member of the Order of Merit in 1992. He is also a Commander of the Order of the Cedars and holds the gold medal of merit of the Lebanon.

Sample of Academician's Research

A twisted cubic curve, the subject of Atiyah's first
paper.

Atiyah's early papers on algebraic geometry (and some general papers) are reprinted in the first volume of his collected works.

As an undergraduate Atiyah was interested in classical projective geometry, and wrote his first paper: a short note on twisted cubics. He started research under W. V. D. Hodge and won the Smith's prize for 1954 for a sheaf-theoretic approach to ruled surfaces, which encouraged Atiyah to continue in mathematics, rather than switch to his
other interests: architecture and archaeology.

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