Robion Cromwell Kirby (born February 25, 1938) is a

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

Mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

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 ...

who specializes in

low-dimensional topology In mathematics, low-dimensional topology is the branch of topology that studies manifolds, or more generally topological spaces, of four or fewer dimensions. Representative topics are the structure theory of 3-manifolds and 4-manifolds, knot th ...

. Together with Laurent C. Siebenmann he invented the Kirby–Siebenmann invariant for classifying the piecewise linear structures on a

topological manifold In topology, a branch of mathematics, a topological manifold is a topological space that locally resembles real ''n''-dimensional Euclidean space. Topological manifolds are an important class of topological spaces, with applications throughout mathe ...

. He also proved the fundamental result on the

Kirby calculus In mathematics, the Kirby calculus in geometric topology, named after Robion Kirby, is a method for modifying framed links in the 3-sphere using a finite set of moves, the Kirby moves. Using four-dimensional Cerf theory, he proved that if ''M'' ...

, a method for describing 3-manifolds and smooth

4-manifold In mathematics, a 4-manifold is a 4-dimensional topological manifold. A smooth 4-manifold is a 4-manifold with a smooth structure. In dimension four, in marked contrast with lower dimensions, topological and smooth manifolds are quite different. T ...

s by surgery on

framed link In mathematics, a knot is an embedding of the circle into three-dimensional Euclidean space, (also known as ). Often two knots are considered equivalent if they are ambient isotopic, that is, if there exists a continuous deformation of ...

s. Along with his significant mathematical contributions, he has over 50 doctoral students and his problem list. 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 ...

from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

in 1965. He soon became an assistant professor at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

. While there he developed his "

torus trick In mathematics, the annulus theorem (formerly called the annulus conjecture) states roughly that the region between two well-behaved spheres is an annulus. It is closely related to the stable homeomorphism conjecture (now proved) which states that ...

" which enabled him to solve, in dimensions greater than four (with additional joint work with Siebenmann), four of

John Milnor John Willard Milnor (born February 20, 1931) is an American mathematician known for his work in differential topology, algebraic K-theory and low-dimensional holomorphic dynamical systems. Milnor is a distinguished professor at Stony Brook Uni ...

's seven most important problems in geometric topology. In 1971, he was awarded the

Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry __NOTOC__ The Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry is an award granted by the American Mathematical Society for notable research in geometry or topology. It was founded in 1961 in memory of Oswald Veblen. The Veblen Prize is now worth US$5000, and is ...

by 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, ...

. In 1995 he became the first mathematician to receive the

NAS Award for Scientific Reviewing The NAS Award for Scientific Reviewing is awarded by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences "to recognize authors whose reviews have synthesized extensive and difficult material, rendering a significant service to science and influencing the course ...

from 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 Nati ...

for his problem list in low-dimensional topology. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2001. In 2012 he became a fellow of the

. Kirby is also the President of

Mathematical Sciences Publishers Mathematical Sciences Publishers is a nonprofit publishing company run by and for mathematicians. It publishes several journals and the book series ''Geometry & Topology Monographs''. It is run from a central office in the Department of Mathemati ...

, a small non-profit academic publishing house that focuses on mathematics and engineering journals.

Books

* *

References

External links

*Kirby'
home page
*Kirby'
list of problems in low dimensional topology
(This is a large 380 page gzipped ps file.)

from th
Proceedings of the Kirbyfest
in honour of his 60th birthday in 1998. * *

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kirby, Robion 1938 births Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Topologists Living people University of Chicago alumni University of California, Los Angeles faculty University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Mathematicians from Illinois Scientists from Chicago