Tsit Yuen Lam (;Faculty Website
retrieved 2014-08-13. born 6 February 1942Curriculum vitae: T. Y. Lam
retrieved 2013-01-12) is a Hong Kong-American mathematician specializing in algebra, especially

ring theory In algebra, ring theory is the study of rings—algebraic structures in which addition and multiplication are defined and have similar properties to those operations defined for the integers. Ring theory studies the structure of rings, their r ...

and

quadratic form In mathematics, a quadratic form is a polynomial with terms all of degree two ("form" is another name for a homogeneous polynomial). For example, :4x^2 + 2xy - 3y^2 is a quadratic form in the variables and . The coefficients usually belong to ...

Academic career

Lam earned his bachelor's degree at the

University of Hong Kong The University of Hong Kong (HKU) (Chinese: 香港大學) is a public university, public research university in Hong Kong. Founded in 1887 as the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese, it is the oldest Higher education in Hong Kong, tertia ...

in 1963 and 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 ...

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manha ...

in 1967 under

Hyman Bass Hyman Bass (; born October 5, 1932)

Grothendieck Groups''.. Subsequently, he was an instructor at the

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

and since 1968 he has been 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 ...

, where he became assistant professor in 1969, associate professor in 1972, and full professor in 1976. He served as assistant department head several times. From 1995 to 1997 he was Deputy Director of the

Mathematical Sciences Research Institute The Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute (SLMath), formerly the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI), is an independent nonprofit mathematical research institution on the University of California campus in Berkeley, Califo ...

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emer ...

. Among his doctoral students is Richard Elman.

Awards and honors

From 1972 to 1974 he was a

Sloan Fellow The Sloan Fellows program is the world's first mid-career and senior career master's degree in general management and leadership. It was initially supported by a grant from Alfred P. Sloan, the late CEO of General Motors, to his alma mater, MI ...

; in 1978–79 a

Miller A miller is a person who operates a Gristmill, mill, a machine to grind a grain (for example corn or wheat) to make flour. Mill (grinding), Milling is among the oldest of human occupations. "Miller", "Milne" and other variants are common surname ...

Research Professor; and in 1981–82 a

Guggenheim Fellow 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 1982 he was awarded the

Leroy P. Steele Prize The Leroy P. Steele Prizes are awarded every year by the American Mathematical Society, for distinguished research work and writing in the field of mathematics. Since 1993, there has been a formal division into three categories. The prizes have ...

for his textbooks. 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 ...

Selected publications

* '' Serre’s Conjecture.'' Lecture Notes in Mathematics, Springer, 1978 * ''Serre’s Problem on Projective Modules.'' Springer 2006
2nd printing, 2010
* ''The Algebraic Theory of Quadratic Forms.'' Benjamin 1973, 1980; new version published a

American Mathematical Society, 2005 * ''A First Course in Non-Commutative Rings.''

Graduate Texts in Mathematics Graduate Texts in Mathematics (GTM) ( ISSN 0072-5285) is a series of graduate-level textbooks in mathematics published by Springer-Verlag. The books in this series, like the other Springer-Verlag mathematics series, are yellow books of a standa ...

, Springer 1991
2nd edition 2001

Springer, Graduate Texts in Mathematics 1999, * ''Sums of squares of real polynomials''. (with Man-Duen Choi &

Bruce Reznick Bruce Reznick (born February 3, 1953 in New York City) is an American mathematician long on the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He is a prolific researcher noted for his contributions to number theory and the combina ...

Proceedings of Symposia in Pure Mathematics 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, ...

58, 103–126, 1995 * ''Orderings, Valuations and Quadratic Forms.'' AMS 1983
''Exercises in Classical Ring Theory.''
Springer 1985 * ''Representations of Finite Groups: A Hundred Years.'
Part IPart II
Notices of the AMS 1998. (pdf files)

References

External links

Lam's homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lam, Tsit Yuen Algebraists 1942 births Fellows of the American Mathematical Society 20th-century Hong Kong mathematicians 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Alumni of the University of Hong Kong Columbia University alumni University of Chicago faculty University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty Place of birth missing (living people) Living people