was a Japanese

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 ...

working in

algebra Algebra () is one of the broad areas of mathematics. Roughly speaking, algebra is the study of mathematical symbols and the rules for manipulating these symbols in formulas; it is a unifying thread of almost all of mathematics. Elementary a ...

and

topology In mathematics, topology (from the Greek language, Greek words , and ) is concerned with the properties of a mathematical object, geometric object that are preserved under Continuous function, continuous Deformation theory, deformations, such ...

. Morita was born in 1915 in

Hamamatsu is a city located in western Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. the city had an estimated population of 791,707 in 340,591 households, making it the prefecture's largest city, and a population density of . The total area of the site was . Overview ...

Shizuoka Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshu. Shizuoka Prefecture has a population of 3,637,998 and has a geographic area of . Shizuoka Prefecture borders Kanagawa Prefecture to the east, Yamanashi Prefecture to the northea ...

and graduated from the Tokyo Higher Normal School in 1936. Three years later he was appointed assistant at the

Tokyo University of Science , formerly "Science University of Tokyo" or TUS, informally or simply is a private research university located in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. History Tokyo University of Science was founded in 1881 as The Tokyo Academy of Physics by 21 graduates ...

. He received his Ph.D. from

Osaka University , abbreviated as , is a public research university located in Osaka Prefecture, Japan. It is one of Japan's former Imperial Universities and a Designated National University listed as a "Top Type" university in the Top Global University Project. ...

in 1950, with a thesis in topology. After teaching at the Tokyo Higher Normal School, he became professor at the

University of Tsukuba is a public university, public research university located in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, Ibaraki, Japan. It is a top 10 Designated National University, and was ranked Type A by the Japanese government as part of the Top Global University Pro ...

in 1951. He held this position until 1978, after which he taught at

Sophia University Sophia University (Japanese: 上智大学, ''Jōchi Daigaku''; Latin: ''Universitas Sedis Sapientiae'') is a private research university in Japan. Sophia is one of the three ''Sōkeijōchi'' (早慶上智) private universities, a group of the to ...

. Morita died of heart failure in 1995 at the Sakakibara Heart Institute in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

; he was survived by his wife, Tomiko, his son, Yasuhiro, and a grandson. He introduced the concepts now known as

Morita equivalence In abstract algebra, Morita equivalence is a relationship defined between rings that preserves many ring-theoretic properties. More precisely two rings like ''R'', ''S'' are Morita equivalent (denoted by R\approx S) if their categories of modules ...

and Morita duality which were given wide circulation in the 1960s by

Hyman Bass Hyman Bass (; born October 5, 1932). The conjecture is named for Hyman Bass and Daniel Quillen, who formulated the c ... References External links *Directory page at University of MichiganAuthor profilein the database zbMATH {{DEFAUL ...

in a series of lectures. The

Morita conjectures The Morita conjectures in general topology are certain problems about normal spaces, now solved in the affirmative. The conjectures, formulated by Kiiti Morita in 1976, asked # If X \times Y is normal for every normal space ''Y'', is ''X'' a discr ...

on normal topological spaces are also named after him.

Publications

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References

1915 births 1995 deaths People from Hamamatsu University of Tsukuba alumni Osaka University alumni 20th-century Japanese mathematicians Algebraists Topologists University of Tsukuba faculty Sophia University faculty {{Asia-mathematician-stub