Jürg Peter Buser, known as Peter Buser, (born 27 February 1946 in

Basel Basel ( ; ), also known as Basle ( ), ; ; ; . is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine (at the transition from the High Rhine, High to the Upper Rhine). Basel is Switzerland's List of cities in Switzerland, third-most-populo ...

) is a Swiss mathematician, specializing in differential geometry and global analysis.

Education and career

Buser received his doctorate in 1976 from the

University of Basel The University of Basel (Latin: ''Universitas Basiliensis''; German: ''Universität Basel'') is a public research university in Basel, Switzerland. Founded on 4 April 1460, it is Switzerland's oldest university and among the world's oldest univ ...

with advisor Heinz Huber and thesis ''Untersuchungen über den ersten Eigenwert des Laplaceoperators auf kompakten Flächen'' (Studies on the first eigenvalue of the Laplace operator on compact surfaces). As a post-doctoral student he was at the

University of Bonn The University of Bonn, officially the Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (), is a public research university in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the () on 18 October 1818 by Frederick Willi ...

, the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint ...

. and 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 university, public research university in Stony Brook, New York, United States, on Long Island. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is on ...

, before he habilitated at the University of Bonn with a thesis on the length spectrum of

Riemann surface In mathematics, particularly in complex analysis, a Riemann surface is a connected one-dimensional complex manifold. These surfaces were first studied by and are named after Bernhard Riemann. Riemann surfaces can be thought of as deformed vers ...

s. Buser is known for his construction of curved isospectral surfaces (published in 1986 and 1988). His 1988 construction led to a negative solution to

Mark Kac Mark Kac ( ; Polish: ''Marek Kac''; August 3, 1914 – October 26, 1984) was a Polish-American mathematician. His main interest was probability theory. His question, " Can one hear the shape of a drum?" set off research into spectral theory, th ...

's famous 1966 problem '' Can one hear the shape of a drum?''. The negative solution was published in 1992 by Scott Wolpert, David Webb and Carolyn S. Gordon. The is named after him and

Jeff Cheeger Jeff Cheeger (born December 1, 1943) is an American mathematician and Silver Professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University. His main interest is differential geometry and its connections with topology and an ...

. He has been a professor at the

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne The École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (, EPFL) is a public university, public research university in Lausanne, Switzerland, founded in 1969 with the mission to "train talented engineers in Switzerland". Like its sister institution E ...

(EPFL) since 1982. From 2004 to 2005 he was president of the

Swiss Mathematical Society The Swiss Mathematical Society, SMS (, SMG; ), founded in Basel on 4 September 1910, is the national mathematical society of Switzerland. It is a member of the European Mathematical Society. History The SMS was established on 4 September 1910 ...

. In 2003 he was made an honorary doctor of the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki (, ; UH) is a public university in Helsinki, Finland. The university was founded in Turku in 1640 as the Royal Academy of Åbo under the Swedish Empire, and moved to Helsinki in 1828 under the sponsorship of Alexander ...

Selected publications

* * * with Hermann Karcher: * with Hermann Karcher: ''Gromov`s almost flat manifolds'',

Astérisque '' Astérisque'' is a mathematical journal published by Société Mathématique de France Groupe Lactalis S.A. (doing business as Lactalis) is a French multinational dairy products corporation, owned by the Besnier family and based in Laval, M ...

1981, Nr. 81, p. 148
"A note on the isoperimetric constant."
In ''Annales scientifiques de l'École Normale Supérieure'', vol. 15, no. 2, 1982, pp. 213-230.
"On the bipartition of graphs."
Discrete Applied Mathematics 9, no. 1 (1984): 105–109.
''Isospectral Riemann Surfaces''
Annales Institut Fourier (Grenoble), vol. 36, 1986, pp. 167–192 * ''Cayley graphs and planar isospectral domains'', in

Toshikazu Sunada is a Japanese mathematician and author of many books and essays on mathematics and mathematical sciences. He is professor emeritus of both Meiji University and Tohoku University. He is also distinguished professor of emeritus at Meiji in recogni ...

(ed.), ''Geometry and Analysis on Manifolds'', Springer Verlag, Lecture Notes in Mathematics, vol. 1339, 1988, pp. 64–77 * ''Geometry and Spectra of Compact Riemann Surfaces'', Birkhäuser 1992;2010 pbk reprint
* with

John Horton Conway John Horton Conway (26 December 1937 – 11 April 2020) was an English mathematician. He was active in the theory of finite groups, knot theory, number theory, combinatorial game theory and coding theory. He also made contributions to many b ...

, Peter Doyle, and Klaus-Dieter Semmler: * with

Peter Sarnak Peter Clive Sarnak (born 18 December 1953) is a South African and American mathematician. Sarnak has been a member of the permanent faculty of the School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study since 2007. He is also Eugene Higgins ...

: * with Mika Seppälä:

References

External links

Homepage at EPFL
{{DEFAULTSORT:Buser, Jurg Peter Swiss mathematicians Differential geometers University of Basel alumni University of Bonn alumni Academic staff of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne 1946 births Living people