Elon Lages Lima

Elon Lages Lima ( born July 9, 1929 in Maceió ) is a Brazilian mathematician who deals with algebraic topology. He was a professor at the Instituto de Matemática Pura e Aplicada, whose director he was several times.

Lima worked as a teacher and earned 1953 his mathematics degree from the University of Rio de Janeiro. In 1958 he received his doctorate at the University of Chicago with Edwin Spaniards ( Duality and Postnikov invariants ). In his thesis he introduced the concept of spectrum in the homotopy theory. This was taken up by the Spaniards and the early 1960s by Michael Atiyah and George W. Whitehead and J. Michael Boardman in his thesis.

He received the Jabuti Prize for his books and the Anisio - Texeira Prize of the Minister of Education. He also received the Grand Cross of the Ordem Nacional do Merito Cientifico. He is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and the Third World Academy of Sciences. He was Guggenheim Fellow.

Among his 25 books are a series of textbooks and in the 1990s he coordinated the training program for teachers at the Instituto de Matemática Pura e Aplicada ( IMPA ). He was a member of the National Board of Education in Brazil. 1987 to 1991, he was supported by the Council of the Carlos Chagas Filho Foundation ( FAPERJ ), the formation in Rio.

Writings

• Common singularities of commuting vector fields on 2- manifolds, Comment. Math Helvet. , Volume 39, 1964, 97-110
• With Manfredo do Carmo immersion of manifolds with non negative sectional curvature, Bol. Soc. Brasil. Math 2, 1971, 9-22
• Stable Postnikov invariants and Their duals. Summa Brasil. Math 4, 1960, 193-251.