Graeme Segal

Graeme Bryce Segal ( born December 21, 1941 in Sydney ) is a British mathematician who deals with topology, mathematical physics and representation theory of groups.

Life and work

Segal received his doctorate in 1967 with Michael Atiyah at the University of Oxford on equivariant K- theory. He is currently a professor at Oxford. He has been a visiting professor at Columbia University. 1969/70 he was in Princeton at the Institute for Advanced Study.

Segal is one of the pioneers in the field of elliptic cohomology and developed his own theory of infinite dimensional loop spaces ( infinite loop spaces ) and the representation theory associated Loop Groups. Both theories have applications in topological quantum field theory and in string theory.

He is a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford ( and after graduation was a Fellow of St. Catherine's College) since 1982 and a Fellow of the Royal Society in London. He is a member of the London Mathematical Society.

In 1990 he was awarded the Pólya Prize. In 1970 he was invited speaker at the ICM in Nice ( Equivariant stable homotopy theory ) and 1990 in Kyoto (Geometric aspects of Quantum Field Theory). In 2010 he received the Sylvester Medal.

Writings

• Loop Groups ( Oxford Mathematical Monographs ). Neuaufl. Clarendon Press, Oxford 2003, ISBN 0-19-853561-9 ( with Andrew Pressley ).
• Lectures on Lie groups and Lie algebras (London Mathematical Society student texts, Vol 32). 5th edition Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2006, ISBN 0-521-49579-2 (with Ian Macdonald and Roger Carter ).