Paul C. Yang () is a

Taiwanese-American Taiwanese Americans () are Americans who carry full or partial ancestry from Taiwan. This includes American-born citizens who descend from migrants from Taiwan. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, 49% of Taiwanese Americans lived in the state of Califo ...

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 ...

specializing in

differential geometry Differential geometry is a mathematical discipline that studies the geometry of smooth shapes and smooth spaces, otherwise known as smooth manifolds. It uses the techniques of differential calculus, integral calculus, linear algebra and multili ...

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

s and

CR manifold In mathematics, a CR manifold, or Cauchy–Riemann manifold, is a differentiable manifold together with a geometric structure modeled on that of a real hypersurface in a complex vector space, or more generally modeled on an edge of a wedge. Formal ...

s. He is best known for his work in Conformal geometry for his study of extremal metrics and his research on

scalar curvature In the mathematical field of Riemannian geometry, the scalar curvature (or the Ricci scalar) is a measure of the curvature of a Riemannian manifold. To each point on a Riemannian manifold, it assigns a single real number determined by the geometry ...

and Q-curvature. In CR Geometry he is known for his work on the CR embedding problem, the CR Paneitz operator and for introducing the Q' curvature in CR Geometry.

Career

Yang earned his doctorate 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 ...

in 1973 under the supervision of Hung-Hsi Wu（() ）. He held positions at

Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranke ...

, the

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. *Indiana Universit ...

and the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...

before joining

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

in 2001.

Awards and honors

Yang was a

Sloan Foundation The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is an American philanthropic nonprofit organization. It was established in 1934 by Alfred P. Sloan Jr., then-president and chief executive officer of General Motors. The Sloan Foundation makes grants to support or ...

Fellow in 1981. In 2012, he became a 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, ...

.List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
/ref>

Selected publications

*Chang, Sun-Yung A.; Yang, Paul C. ''Conformal deformation of metrics on

S^2

''. J. Differential Geom. 27 (1988), no. 2, 259–296. *Chang, Sun-Yung A.; Yang, Paul C. ''Prescribing Gaussian curvature on

S^2

''. Acta Math. 159 (1987), no. 3–4, 215–259. *Chang, Sun-Yung A.; Yang, Paul C. ''Extremal metrics of zeta function determinants on 4-manifolds''. Ann. of Math. (2) 142 (1995), no. 1, 171–212. *Chang, Sun-Yung A.; Gursky, Matthew J.; Yang, Paul C. ''The scalar curvature equation on 2- and 3-spheres''. Calc. Var. Partial Differential Equations 1 (1993), no. 2, 205–229. *Chang, Sun-Yung A.; Gursky, Matthew J.; Yang, Paul C. ''An equation of Monge-Ampère type in conformal geometry, and four-manifolds of positive Ricci curvature''. Ann. of Math. (2) 155 (2002), no. 3, 709–787. *Yang, Paul C.; Yau, Shing-Tung ''Eigenvalues of the Laplacian of compact Riemann surfaces and minimal submanifolds''. Ann. Scuola Norm. Sup. Pisa Cl. Sci. (4) 7 (1980), no. 1, 55–63. *Chanillo, Sagun; Chiu, Hung-Lin; Yang, Paul C. ''Embeddability for Three Dimensional Cauchy-Riemann Manifolds and CR Yamabe Invariants'', Duke Math. J.,161(15), (2012), 2909–2921.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yang, Paul C. Living people 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Fellows of the American Mathematical Society University of California, Berkeley alumni Rice University faculty University of Maryland, College Park faculty Indiana University faculty University of Southern California faculty Princeton University faculty American people of Chinese descent Differential geometers Chinese mathematicians Year of birth missing (living people) People from Changhua County