Centenary lecture
Tyndall Lecture Theatre, HH Wills Physics Laboratory, 5.30 pm
Monday 14 December 2009
Professor Sir Michael Atiyah, OM, FRS, Mathematician
Topology and Quantum Physics
Biography of Professor Sir Michael Atiyah
Michael Atiyah is one of the most influential mathematicians of the twentieth century. His hugely influential work on K-theory won him a Fields Medal in 1966, the highest honour a mathematician can receive- equivalent to a Nobel Prize. He was awarded the Copley Medal in 1988 and Abel Prize in 2004 for the Atiyah-Singer index theorem. Atiyah pursued an exceptional academic career at Oxford, Cambridge and Princeton, and he presently holds an honorary chair at the University of Edinburgh. He was President of the Royal Society, Master of Trinity College Cambridge and the first director of the Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences. His recent work focuses on understanding the mathematical structure of space and the connections with the physical processes that take place within it. Atiyah is an excellent expositor and an outstanding example of a mathematician who exerts significant influence on the development of fundamental science.