Shiing-shen Chern has for roughly half a century enjoyed the reputation of a mathematician (more specifically, a geometer) of the first rank. His bibliography (complete through 1989) lists 147 publications, of which all but a few are now being reprinted in four handsome volumes, of which this is the second. Contains an introductory essay by Chern himself, 36 papers (six in French, one in Italian, the remainder in English), and a list of the dissertions (author and title) which were written under his supervision (10 at Chicago, 31 at Berkeley). (NW) Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
In recognition of professor Shiing-Shen Cherns long and distinguished service to mathematics and to the University of California, the geometers at Berkeley held an International Symposium in Global Analysis and Global Geometry in his honor in June 1979. The output of this Symposium was published in a series of three separate volumes, comprising approximately a third of Professor Cherns total publications up to 1979. Later, a fourth volume was published, focusing on papers written during the Eighties. This second volume comprises selected papers written between 1932 and 1965.
[ 1] Pairs of Plane Curves with Points in One-to-One Correspondence.- [ 3]
Associate Quadratic Complexes of a Rectilinear Congruence.- [ 6] Sur la
Geometrie d'une Equation Differentielle du Troisieme Ordre.- [ 8] On
Projective Normal Coordinates.- [ 9] On Two Affine Connections.- [ 10] Sur la
Geometrie d'un Systeme d'Equations Differentielles du Second Ordre.- [ 12] Sur
les Invariants Integraux en Geometrie.- [ 14] Sur une Generalisation d'une
Formule de Crofton.- [ 15] Sulla Formula Principale Cinematica dello Spazio ad
n dimensioni (with Chih-ta Yen).- [ 17] Sur les Invariants de Contact en
Geometrie Projective Differentielle.- [ 20] The Geometry of Isotropic
Surfaces.- [ 21] On a Weyl Geometry Defined from an (n - 1) Parameter Family
of Hypersurfaces in a Space of n Dimensions.- [ 22] On the Euclidean
Connections in a Finsler Space.- [ 24] Laplace Transforms of a Class of Higher
Dimensional Varieties in a Projective Space of n Dimensions.- [ 26] Integral
Formulas for the Characteristic Classes of Sphere Bundles.- [ 29] Some New
Characterizations of the Euclidean Sphere.- [ 32] Some New Viewpoints in
Differential Geometry in the Large.- [ 34] Differential Geometry in Symplectic
Space I (with Hsien-chung Wang).- [ 40] Note on Projective Differential Line
Geometry.- [ 42] Local Equivalence and Euclidean Connections in Finsler
Spaces.- [ 43] The Imbedding Theorem for Fibre Bundles (with Yi-Fone Sun).-
[ 45] The Homology Structure of Sphere Bundles (with E. Spanier).- [ 46]
Differential Geometry of Fiber Bundles.- [ 48] On the Kinematic Formula in the
Euclidean Space of n Dimensions.- [ 49] Elie Cartan and his Mathematical Work
(with Claude Chevalley).- [ 50] Some Theorems on the Isometric Imbedding of
Compact Riemann Manifolds in Euclidean Space (with Nicolaas H. Kuiper).- [ 53]
Relations Between Riemannian and Hermitian Geometries.- [ 56] La Geometrie des
Sous-Varietes d'un Espace Euclidien a Plusieurs Dimensions.- [ 57] An
Elementary Proof of the Existence of Isothermal Parameters on a Surface.-
[ 58] On Special W-Surfaces.- [ 59] On Curvature and Characteristic Classes of
a Riemann Manifold.- [ 64] A Proof of the Uniqueness of Minkowski's Problem
for Convex Surfaces.- [ 66] On the Total Curvature of Immersed Manifolds, II
(with Richard K. Lashof).- [ 67] Differential Geometry and Integral Geometry.-
[ 77] On the Isometry of Compact Submanifolds in Euclidean Space (with
Chuan-chih Hsiung).- [ 80] Hermitian Vector Bundles and the Equidistribution
of the Zeroes of their Holomorphic Sections (with Raoul Bott).- List of Ph.D
Theses Written Under the Supervision of S.S. Chern.- Permissions.
Shiing-Shen Chern (October 26, 1911 - December 3, 2004) was a Chinese-born American mathematician and is regarded as one of the leaders in differential geometry of the twentieth century. Chern graduated from Nankai University in Tianjin, China in 1930; he received an M.S. degree in 1934 from Tsinghua University in Beijing and his doctorate from the University of Hamburg, Germany in 1936. A year later he returned to Tsinghua as a Professor of Mathematics. Chern was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey, from 1943 to 1945. In 1946 he returned to China to become Acting Director of the Institute of Mathematics at the Academia Sinica in Nanjing. Chern returned to the United States in 1949 and taught at the University of Chicago, where he collaborated with Andre Weil, and later at the University of California in Berkeley. In 1961 he became a naturalized U.S. citizen. Chern served as Vice-President of the American Mathematical Society (1963-64) and was elected to both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1975 and the Wolf Prize in 1983. He helped found and was the director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley (1981-84) and in 1985 played an important role in the establishment of the Nankai Institute of Mathematics in Tianjin, where he held several posts, including director, until his death.
