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George Mostow

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Nationality
  
American

Role
  
Mathematician


Name
  
George Mostow

Alma mater
  
Harvard University



Born
  
July 4, 1923 (age 100) (
1923-07-04
)

Institutions
  
Johns Hopkins University Yale University

Thesis
  
The Extensibility of Local Lie Groups of Transformations and Groups on Surfaces (1948)

Notable awards
  
Wolf Prize (2013) Leroy P. Steele Prize (1993)

Books
  
Strong Rigidity of Locally Symmetric Spaces, Fundamental structures of algebra, Linear algebra

Awards
  
Wolf Prize in Mathematics, Guggenheim Fellowship for Natural Sciences, US & Canada

Education
  
Harvard University (1948)

Doctoral advisor
  
Garrett Birkhoff

George Daniel Mostow (July 4, 1923 – April 4, 2017) was an American mathematician, renowned for his contributions to Lie theory. He was the Henry Ford II (emeritus) Professor of Mathematics at Yale University, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the 49th President of the American Mathematical Society (1987–1988), and former Trustee of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.

The rigidity phenomenon for lattices in Lie groups he discovered and explored is known as Mostow rigidity. His work on rigidity played an essential role in the work of three Fields medalists, namely Grigori Margulis, William Thurston, and Grigori Perelman. He served as a Trustee of the Institute for Advanced Study from 1982 to 1992. In 1993 he was awarded the AMS Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research. In 2013, he was awarded the Wolf Prize in Mathematics for his "for his fundamental and pioneering contribution to geometry and Lie group theory."

Biography

George (Dan) Mostow was born in 1923. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1948. His academic appointments had been at Syracuse University from 1949 to 1952, at Johns Hopkins University from 1952 to 1961 and at Yale University from 1961 until his retirement in 1999. Mostow was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1974, served as the President of the American Mathematical Society in 1987 and 1988, and was a Trustee of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. from 1982 to 1992. He was awarded the AMS Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research in 1993 for his book Strong rigidity of locally symmetric spaces (1973). He died on April 4, 2017.

References

George Mostow Wikipedia