Ky Fan

Ky Fan ( born September 19, 1914 in Hangchow, † March 22, 2010 in Santa Barbara ) was one of the most important Chinese mathematicians of the 20th century.

Career

Ky Fan graduated in 1936 from Beijing University in 1941 and his doctorate at the University of Paris with Maurice René Fréchet. His further academic career was in the United States.

He was 1945-1947 Member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University and was later a professor at the University of Notre Dame, Wayne State University and Northwestern University held until he was finally appointed in 1965 to the University of California, Santa Barbara to which he remained faithful also to his retirement and then as professor emeritus.

Ky Fan was married to Yu -Fen Fan

Work

Ky Fan created important contributions in many areas of mathematics, especially the non-linear analysis. In the matrix theory, he defined the Ky Fan norm and showed that it is a norm. Other important contributions have been made in convex analysis ( Ky Fan inequality) or the approximation theory ( the set of the best approximation of Ky Fan). Very famous is the fixed point theorem of Ky Fan, which generalizes the traditional fixed-point theorems for set-valued images, and thus forms an important basis for example in game theory. Further work of Ky Fan can be found in the field of topology and topological groups.