Stephen Shing-Toung Yau (; born 1952) is a Chinese-American mathematician. He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the

University of Illinois at Chicago The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) is a Public university, public research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its campus is in the Near West Side, Chicago, Near West Side community area, adjacent to the Chicago Loop. The second campus esta ...

, and currently teaches at

Tsinghua University Tsinghua University (; abbreviation, abbr. THU) is a National university, national Public university, public research university in Beijing, China. The university is funded by the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, Minis ...

. He is a Fellow of the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

and 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, ...

Biography

Shing-Toung Yau was born in 1952 in

British Hong Kong Hong Kong was a colony and later a dependent territory of the British Empire from 1841 to 1997, apart from a period of occupation under the Japanese Empire from 1941 to 1945 during the Pacific War. The colonial period began with the Briti ...

, with his

ancestral home An ancestral home is the place of origin of one's extended family, particularly the home owned and preserved by the same family for several generations. The term can refer to an individual house or estate, or to a broader geographic area such as a ...

Jiaoling County Jiaoling County ( postal: Chiuling; ) is a county in the northeast of Guangdong Province, China, bordering Fujian province to the north. Under the jurisdiction of Meizhou City, it was previously known as the Zhenping County ( postal: Chenping). ...

Guangdong Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...

, China. He is the younger brother of

Fields Medal The Fields Medal is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years. The name of the award ho ...

ist

Shing-Tung Yau Shing-Tung Yau (; ; born April 4, 1949) is a Chinese-American mathematician and the William Caspar Graustein Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University. In April 2022, Yau announced retirement from Harvard to become Chair Professor of mathem ...

. After graduating from the

Chinese University of Hong Kong The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) is a public research university in Ma Liu Shui, Hong Kong, formally established in 1963 by a charter granted by the Legislative Council of Hong Kong. It is the territory's second-oldest university an ...

, he studied mathematics at the

State University of New York at Stony Brook Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public research university in Stony Brook, New York. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is one of the State University of New York system's ...

, where he learnt after

Henry Laufer Henry B. Laufer (born 1945) is an American hedge fund manager, investor, mathematician, and philanthropist. He served as the Vice President of Research at Renaissance Technologies. Early life Henry B. Laufer was born to a Jewish family in 1945. H ...

and earned his M.A. in 1974 and Ph.D. in 1976. He was a member of

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 ...

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 1976 to 1977 and from 1981 to 1982, and was a Benjamin Pierce Assistant Professor at

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 higher le ...

from 1977 to 1980. He subsequently taught at the

for more than 30 years. He was named the UIC Distinguished Professor in 2005. From 2002 to 2011, Yau also served as the Zi-Jiang Professor at

East China Normal University East China Normal University (ECNU) is a comprehensive Public university, public research university in Shanghai, China. It was formed in 1951 by the merger of the Great China University (est. 1924) and Kwang Hua University (est. 1925) and origin ...

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...

, as well as Director of the university's Institute of Mathematics. After retiring from UIC in 2012, he joined

as a full-time professor.

Research

Among Yau's research interests are

bioinformatics Bioinformatics () is an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological data, in particular when the data sets are large and complex. As an interdisciplinary field of science, bioinformatics combi ...

complex algebraic geometry In mathematics, complex geometry is the study of geometric structures and constructions arising out of, or described by, the complex numbers. In particular, complex geometry is concerned with the study of spaces such as complex manifolds and c ...

, singularities theory, and nonlinear filtering. He published nearly 300 papers and established the "Yau algebra" and the "Yau number". He served as Chairman of the IEEE International Conference on Control and Information and co-founded the ''Journal of Algebraic Geometry'' in 1991. He founded the journal ''Communications in Information and Systems'' in 2000, and has served as Editor-in-Chief since its inception.

Awards

Yau was awarded the

Sloan Research 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 and the

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in 2000. He was elected an

IEEE Fellow As of 2019, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has 5,082 members designated Fellow, each of whom is associated with one of the 41 societies under the IEEE. The Fellow grade of membership is the highest level of membershi ...

in 2003 and a fellow of the

in 2013.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yau, Stephen Shing-Toung 1952 births Living people 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Academic journal editors Alumni of the Chinese University of Hong Kong American people of Chinese descent East China Normal University faculty Fellow Members of the IEEE Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Hakka scientists Harvard University faculty Hong Kong emigrants to the United States Hong Kong mathematicians Institute for Advanced Study faculty Sloan Research Fellows Stony Brook University alumni Tsinghua University faculty University of Illinois Chicago faculty