Yutaka Taniyama

Yutaka Taniyama (Japanese谷 山 豊, Yutaka Taniyama, actually Taniyama Toyo, born November 12, 1927 in Kisai near Tokyo, † November 17, 1958 in Tokyo ) was a Japanese mathematician.

Life

Taniyama grew up as the son of a country doctor on in Kisai, a small village near Tokyo. His school career was delayed because he fell ill with tuberculosis and the school therefore had to suspend two years. In 1953 he graduated from the University of Tokyo, where he was then a research student and assistant professor. Together with his friend Goro Shimura - who continued many of his works after his death - he presented the 1955-1957 Taniyama - Shimura conjecture on; this means that elliptic curves over the rational numbers can be expressed as modular forms forever. The formulation and the promotion of the importance of this assumption comes from André Weil (that's why his name is also sometimes appended to the presumption ), the Shimura and Taniyama in 1955 met at a conference on algebraic number theory in Tokyo. This assumption provided an important element in the proof of Fermat's Last theorem by Andrew Wiles (1995) and in 1999 completely proved.

Under mysterious circumstances, apparently without cause Taniyama committed suicide five days after his 31st birthday, and in the midst of preparing for his wedding. He left a suicide note in which he stated, the impulse to commit suicide came to him spontaneously and incomprehensible for himself. Less than a month later followed him his fiancée Misako Suzuki in death.

His friend Shimura characterizes him in an obituary as withdrawn alive and essentially only interested in mathematics ( occasionally he also went to the movies or listened to classical music - especially Beethoven's 8th Symphony).

Writings

• With Goro Shimura: Kindai - teki Seisu - ron ( Modern number theory ), Kyoritsu Shuppan, 1957 ( in Japanese)
• With Goro Shimura: Complex multiplication of abelian varieties and its applications to number theory, Publications of the Mathematical Society of Japan 6, Kenkyusha, Tokyo, 1961 ( in English; posthumously )