Bertram Kostant

Bertram Kostant (* 1928 in Brooklyn ) is ( for example, Toda lattices ) employs an American mathematician, with Lie groups, Lie algebras, representation theory, homogeneous spaces, differential geometry ( symplectic geometry, symmetric spaces ), and mathematical physics.

Life and work

Kostant went to school in New York City, where in 1945 he graduated from Stuyvesant High School. From 1950 he studied at Purdue University, received in 1951 from the University of Chicago his master's degree and became his doctorate in 1954 at Irving Segal with the dissertation Representations of a Lie algebra and its enveloping algebra on Hilbert Space. 1953 to 1955 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study (as well as 1966/67 ), then a lecturer at Princeton University and in 1956 assistant professor at Berkeley, where he became Associate Professor in 1961 and Professor in 1962. From 1962 he was a professor at MIT, where he retired in 1993.

He is best known for example for his contributions to the theory of geometric quantization ( Pre- Quantization ), which is also developed by Jean-Marie Souriau around the same time. He developed the theory and the example of the Toda lattice.

In 1978 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1970 he was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Nice ( orbits and quantization theory ).

His doctoral include James Lepowsky, Moss Sweedler and David Vogan.

His collected papers are to appear in 2008 by Springer.