George Daniel Mostow (July 4, 1923 – April 4, 2017) was an 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, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

, renowned for his contributions to

Lie theory In mathematics, the mathematician Sophus Lie ( ) initiated lines of study involving integration of differential equations, transformation groups, and contact of spheres that have come to be called Lie theory. For instance, the latter subject i ...

. He was the Henry Ford II (emeritus) Professor of Mathematics at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

, a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nat ...

, the 49th president 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 ...

(1987–1988), and a trustee 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 scholar ...

from 1982 to 1992. The rigidity phenomenon for lattices in

Lie group In mathematics, a Lie group (pronounced ) is a group that is also a differentiable manifold. A manifold is a space that locally resembles Euclidean space, whereas groups define the abstract concept of a binary operation along with the addit ...

s he discovered and explored is known as

Mostow rigidity Mostow may refer to: People * George Mostow (1923–2017), American mathematician ** Mostow rigidity theorem * Jonathan Mostow (born 1961), American movie and television director Places * Mostów Mostów is a village in the administrative distr ...

. His work on rigidity played an essential role in the work of three Fields medalists, namely

Grigori Margulis Grigory Aleksandrovich Margulis (russian: Григо́рий Алекса́ндрович Маргу́лис, first name often given as Gregory, Grigori or Gregori; born February 24, 1946) is a Russian-American mathematician known for his work on ...

William Thurston William Paul Thurston (October 30, 1946August 21, 2012) was an American mathematician. He was a pioneer in the field of low-dimensional topology and was awarded the Fields Medal in 1982 for his contributions to the study of 3-manifolds. Thursto ...

, and

Grigori Perelman Grigori Yakovlevich Perelman ( rus, links=no, Григорий Яковлевич Перельман, p=ɡrʲɪˈɡorʲɪj ˈjakəvlʲɪvʲɪtɕ pʲɪrʲɪlʲˈman, a=Ru-Grigori Yakovlevich Perelman.oga; born 13 June 1966) is a Russian mathemati ...

. In 1993 he was awarded the American Mathematical Society's Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research. In 2013, he was awarded the

Wolf Prize in Mathematics The Wolf Prize in Mathematics is awarded almost annually by the Wolf Foundation in Israel. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation and awarded since 1978; the others are in Agriculture, Chemistry, Medicine, Physics and Arts. ...

"for his fundamental and pioneering contribution to geometry and Lie group theory."

Biography

George (Dan) Mostow was born in 1923 in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the capital city, state capital and List of municipalities in Massachusetts, most populous city of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financ ...

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...

. His parents were

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""T ...

from

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian invas ...

who immigrated to the United States in the early 20th century. He received his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

in 1948, with a thesis written under the supervision of

Garrett Birkhoff Garrett Birkhoff (January 19, 1911 – November 22, 1996) was an American mathematician. He is best known for his work in lattice theory. The mathematician George Birkhoff (1884–1944) was his father. Life The son of the mathematician G ...

. His academic appointments had been at

Syracuse University Syracuse University (informally 'Cuse or SU) is a Private university, private research university in Syracuse, New York. Established in 1870 with roots in the Methodist Episcopal Church, the university has been nonsectarian since 1920. Locate ...

from 1949 to 1952, at

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consiste ...

from 1952 to 1961, and at

from 1961 until his retirement in 1999. Mostow was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1974, served as the President of the American Mathematical Society in 1987 and 1988, and was a Trustee of the

Princeton, New Jersey Princeton is a municipality with a borough form of government in Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton and Princeton Township, both of whi ...

from 1982 to 1992. He was awarded the AMS Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research in 1993 for his book ''Strong rigidity of locally symmetric spaces'' (1973). He died on April 4, 2017.

References

* Science 20 October 1978: Vol. 202. no. 4365, pp. 297–298. *

Pierre Deligne Pierre René, Viscount Deligne (; born 3 October 1944) is a Belgian mathematician. He is best known for work on the Weil conjectures, leading to a complete proof in 1973. He is the winner of the 2013 Abel Prize, 2008 Wolf Prize, 1988 Crafoord Pr ...

and Daniel Mostow, ''Commensurabilities among lattices in PU(1,n)''. Annals of Mathematics Studies, 132. Princeton University Press, 1993 * Roger Howe, editor, ''Discrete groups in geometry and analysis''. Papers in Honor of G. D. Mostow on His Sixtieth Birthday (Conference held at Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA, March 23–25, 1986), Progress in Mathematics, Vol. 67. Birkhäuser, Boston–Basel–Stuttgart * George Mostow, ''Strong rigidity of locally symmetric spaces'', Annals of Mathematics Studies, no. 78, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1973 * Alexander Lubotzky, ''Tannaka duality for discrete groups''. American Journal of Mathematics Vol. 102, pp. 663 – 689, 1980

External links

AMS Presidents: A Timeline
at the

website. {{DEFAULTSORT:Mostow, George 1923 births 2017 deaths 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians American people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Presidents of the American Mathematical Society Wolf Prize in Mathematics laureates Harvard University alumni Yale University faculty Syracuse University faculty Johns Hopkins University faculty People from Boston Mathematicians from Massachusetts Mathematicians from New York (state)

Biography

See also

References

External links