Alfred Gray (mathematician)

Alfred Gray ( born October 22, 1939 in Dallas, † October 27th 1998 in Bilbao) was an American mathematician who dealt with differential geometry.

Life

Gray studied mathematics at the University of Kansas and was founded in 1964 at the University of California, Berkeley at Leo Sario ( and Barrett O'Neill ) PhD (Dissertation: Minimal varieties and Kähler submanifolds ). As a post - graduate student, he spent four years at the University of California, Berkeley. From 1970 until his death he was a professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. He died of a heart attack while working with students in Bilbao.

Gray dealt among other things with the classification of geometric structures such as Kähler manifolds and almost - Hermitian manifolds; doing so he introduced the concept of fast Kähler manifold ( Nearly Kähler manifold ). He also dealt with the calculation of volumes of balls and tubes ( in extension of the theory of Hermann Weyl ), about which he published a book with curvature identities and topological obstructions to the existence of geometric structures, for example, for complex structures on compact manifolds.

He was a pioneer in the use of computer graphics in the teaching of differential geometry, and published books on the theory of differential geometry and differential equations with computer assistance (Mathematica ).

Writings

  • Tubes, Addison -Wesley, 1990, 2nd edition Birkhäuser 2004
  • Elsa Abbena, Simon Salamon Modern differential geometry of curves and surfaces with Mathematica, 3rd edition, Studies in Advanced Mathematics, Chapman and Hall, Boca Raton 2006 ( first 1993)
  • Michael Mezzino, Mark A. Pinsky Introduction to ordinary differential equations with Mathematica: an integrated multimedia approach, Springer Verlag 1997
  • Differential Geometry: classical theory in modern representation, Spektrum Akademischer Verlag 1994 (Editor Hubert Gollek )
  • Notes on the use of Mathematica in Mark Pinsky partial differential equations and boundary- value problems with applications, McGraw Hill 1991
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