Chuu-Lian Terng () is a Taiwanese-American

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

. Her research areas are differential geometry and

integrable systems In mathematics, integrability is a property of certain dynamical systems. While there are several distinct formal definitions, informally speaking, an integrable system is a dynamical system with sufficiently many conserved quantities, or first ...

, with particular interests in completely integrable Hamiltonian

partial differential equations In mathematics, a partial differential equation (PDE) is an equation which imposes relations between the various partial derivatives of a multivariable function. The function is often thought of as an "unknown" to be solved for, similarly to ...

and their relations to differential geometry, the geometry and topology of submanifolds in symmetric spaces, and the geometry of isometric actions.

Education and career

She received her B.S. from

National Taiwan University National Taiwan University (NTU; ) is a public research university in Taipei, Taiwan. The university was founded in 1928 during Japanese rule as the seventh of the Imperial Universities. It was named Taihoku Imperial University and served d ...

in 1971 and her Ph.D. from

Brandeis University , mottoeng = "Truth even unto its innermost parts" , established = , type = Private research university , accreditation = NECHE , president = Ronald D. Liebowitz , ...

in 1976 under the supervision of

Richard Palais Richard Sheldon Palais (born May 22, 1931) is a mathematician working in geometry who introduced the principle of symmetric criticality, the Mostow–Palais theorem, the Lie–Palais theorem, the Morse–Palais lemma, and the Palais–Smale c ...

, whom she later married. She is currently a professor emerita at the

University of California at Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and pr ...

. She was a professor at Northeastern University for many years. Before joining Northeastern, she spent two years at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

and four years at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

. She also spent two years at the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent schola ...

(IAS) in Princeton and two years at the

Max-Planck Institute The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science (german: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e. V.; abbreviated MPG) is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes. ...

Bonn, Germany The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr ...

. Terng has been an active member of the

Association for Women in Mathematics The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) is a professional society whose mission is to encourage women and girls to study and to have active careers in the mathematical sciences, and to promote equal opportunity for and the equal treatment o ...

(AWM). She served as AWM President from 1995 to 1997, chaired the Julia Robinson Celebration of Women in Math Conference, which was held July 1–3, 1996, and chaired the Michler Prize and Travel/Mentoring Grant Committees.. Terng has served on the editorial boards of the Transactions of the AMS, the Taiwanese Journal of Mathematics, Communications of Analysis and Geometry, the

Proceedings of the AMS ''Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal of mathematics published by the American Mathematical Society. As a requirement, all articles must be at most 15 printed pages. According to the ' ...

, and the Journal of Fixed Point Theory and its Applications. In 1999, she was selected as the

AWM/MAA Falconer Lecturer The Etta Z. Falconer Lecture is an award and lecture series which honors "women who have made distinguished contributions to the mathematical sciences or mathematics education". It is sponsored by the Association for Women in Mathematics and the Ma ...

. Her citation reads:

Her early research concerned the classification of
natural Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

vector bundle In mathematics, a vector bundle is a topological construction that makes precise the idea of a family of vector spaces parameterized by another space X (for example X could be a topological space, a manifold, or an algebraic variety): to every p ...
s and natural differential operators between them. She then became interested in
submanifold In mathematics, a submanifold of a manifold ''M'' is a subset ''S'' which itself has the structure of a manifold, and for which the inclusion map satisfies certain properties. There are different types of submanifolds depending on exactly which ...
geometry. Her main contributions are developing a structure theory for isoparametric submanifolds in $\mathbb^n$ and constructing
soliton In mathematics and physics, a soliton or solitary wave is a self-reinforcing wave packet that maintains its shape while it propagates at a constant velocity. Solitons are caused by a cancellation of nonlinear and dispersive effects in the medi ...
equations from special submanifolds. Recently, Terng and
Karen Uhlenbeck Karen Keskulla Uhlenbeck (born August 24, 1942) is an American mathematician and one of the founders of modern geometric analysis. She is a professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin, where she held the Sid W. Richard ...
(
University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,07 ...
) have developed a general approach to
integrable In mathematics, integrability is a property of certain dynamical systems. While there are several distinct formal definitions, informally speaking, an integrable system is a dynamical system with sufficiently many conserved quantities, or first ...
PDEs that explains their hidden symmetries in terms of
loop group In mathematics, a loop group is a group of loops in a topological group ''G'' with multiplication defined pointwise. Definition In its most general form a loop group is a group of continuous mappings from a manifold to a topological group . ...
actions. She is co-author of the book Submanifold Geometry and Critical Point Theory and an editor of the Journal of Differential Geometry survey volume 4 on "Integrable systems". Professor Terng served as president of the
Association for Women in Mathematics The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) is a professional society whose mission is to encourage women and girls to study and to have active careers in the mathematical sciences, and to promote equal opportunity for and the equal treatment o ...
(AWM) from 1995 to 1997 and as Member-at-Large of the Council of the
American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...
(AMS) from 1989 to 1992. She is currently on the Advisory Board of the National Center for Theoretical Sciences in Taiwan, the Steering Committee of the
Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent schola ...
Park City Summer Institute, and the Editorial Board of the Transactions of the AMS.

Honors

Sloan Fellowship The Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation since 1955 to "provide support and recognition to early-career scientists and scholars". This program is one of the oldest of its kind in the United States. ...

in 1980. * Humboldt Senior Scientist Award in 1997. *

in 1999 * Fellow of the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

, 2012. * Fellow of the

, 2018 (inaugural class).

Recognition

With Sun-Yung Alice Chang,

Fan Chung Fan-Rong King Chung Graham (; born October 9, 1949), known professionally as Fan Chung, is a Taiwanese-born American mathematician who works mainly in the areas of spectral graph theory, extremal graph theory and random graphs, in particular in g ...

, Winnie Li, Jang-Mei Wu, and Mei-Chi Shaw, Terng is one of a group of six women mathematicians from

called by

Shiing-Shen Chern Shiing-Shen Chern (; , ; October 28, 1911 – December 3, 2004) was a Chinese-American mathematician and poet. He made fundamental contributions to differential geometry and topology. He has been called the "father of modern differential geome ...

"a miracle in Chinese history; the glory of the Chinese people".

References

External links

Terng's Home Page
at University of California, Irvine. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Terng, Chuu-Lian Living people 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Brandeis University alumni Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Fellows of the Association for Women in Mathematics National Taiwan University alumni Northeastern University faculty Princeton University faculty Sloan Research Fellows Taiwanese emigrants to the United States 20th-century Taiwanese mathematicians University of California, Berkeley faculty University of California, Irvine faculty Women mathematicians Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people)