Wu Wenjun

Wu Wenjun (Chinese吴文俊, Pinyin Wú Wenjun, Wu Wen- Tsuen W.-G.; born May 12, 1919 in Shanghai) is a Chinese mathematician ( differential geometry, topology, Geometry ).

Wu received his undergraduate degree in 1940 at the Shanghai Jiaotong University and then worked - China was occupied by the Japanese and the middle of the war - as a teacher. In 1946 he met Shiing - Shen Chern, who just built the Mathematical Institute of the Academia Sinica and accepted him as a student. Wu showed Chern a simpler proof (as Whitney ) of Hassler Whitney product theorem for spherical fiber bundles and was accepted after a nationwide exam 1947 for study abroad. In 1949 he received his doctorate at the University of Strasbourg in Charles Ehresmann ( Sur les classes caractéristiques of structures fibrées sphériques ). In Strasbourg he also came with René Thom in contact, who in his autobiography as restrained and friendly Chinese people whose bills were legendary for their reliability, characterizes him. 1950 Wu studied further in Paris with Henri Cartan, where he discovered the eponymous characteristic classes. In 1951 he returned to China and became in 1953 a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he is today. In the 1950s, he investigated embedding problems in Euclidean spaces and embedding led classes - summarized in a book in 1965.

After he was sent during the Cultural Revolution in a computer company he started in the 1970s for automatic proof methods in elementary geometry to be interested in what was to be his future field of work ( which he calls " the mechanization of mathematics "). In 1977 he proved this - based on methods of Joseph Ritt - a central set. He also proved that the rational homotopy theory of Dennis Sullivan can be treated algorithmically.

In 1957 he was inducted into the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 1991 he received the mathematics prize of the Academy of developing countries. In 1997 he was awarded the Herbrand Award. In 2000 he was awarded the First State Prize in Science and Technology of the People 's Republic of China ( with Yuan Longping ), awarded by Jiang Zemin. In 2006 he received along with David Mumford the Shaw Prize.

Wu also studied the history of Chinese mathematics and was editor of a large eight-volume history of Chinese mathematics.

Writings

• Theory of imbedding immersion and isotopy of polytopes in a euclidean space. 1965
• Mathematical theorem proving in geometry. Springer 1994
• Mathematics Mechanization. Springer 2000
• Rational Homotopy Type. Springer 1987
• Selected Works. World Scientific 2006