Erik Christopher Zeeman

Infobox Scientist
name = Professor Sir Erik Christopher Zeeman
box_width = 26em

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image_width = 150px
caption =
birth_date = Birth date and age|1925|2|4
birth_place = Japan
death_date =
death_place =
residence = United Kingdom
citizenship = British
nationality =
ethnicity =
field = Mathematics
work_institutions = University of Cambridge, England University of Warwick, England Oxford University, England Gresham College, England
alma_mater = University of Cambridge, England
doctoral_advisor = Shaun Wylie
doctoral_students = David Epstein Jenny Harrison Terry Wall
known_for = Catastrophe theory Geometric topology Singularity theory
author_abbrev_bot =
author_abbrev_zoo =
prizes = Senior Whitehead Prize (1982) Faraday Medal (1988) (2006)
religion =
footnotes = Fellow of the Royal Society

Sir Erik Christopher Zeeman FRS (born 4 February 1925), is a Japanese-born British mathematician known for his work in geometric topology and singularity theory.

Zeeman's main contributions to mathematics were in topology, particularly in knot theory, the piecewise linear category, and dynamical systems.

His thesis at Cambridge university described a new theory termed "dihomology", an algebraic structure associated to a topological space, containing both homolgy and cohomolgy, introducing what is now known as the Zeeman spectral sequence. This was studied by Clint McCrory in his 1972 Brandeis thesis following a suggestion of Dennis Sullivan that one make "a general study of the Zeeman spectral sequence to see how singularities in a space perturb Poincare duality". This in turn led to the discovery of intersection homology by Robert MacPherson and Mark Goresky at Brown University where McCrory was appointed in 1974.

Zeeman is known among the wider scientific public for his contribution to, and spreading awareness of catastrophe theory, which was due initially to another topologist, René Thom, and for his Christmas lectures about mathematics on television in 1978. He was especially active encouraging the application of mathematics, and catastrophe theory in particular, to biology and behavioural sciences.

Early life

Zeeman was born in Japan to a Danish father, Christian Zeeman, and a British mother.He and his parents moved to England one year after his birth. After being educated at Christ's Hospital in Horsham, West Sussex, he served as a Flying Officer with the Royal Air Force from 1943 to 1947. He studied mathematics at Christ's College, Cambridge, but had forgotten much of his high-school mathematics while serving for the air force. He received an MA and PhD (the latter under the supervision of Shaun Wylie from the University of Cambridge, and became a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College.

Academic career

After working at Cambridge (during which he spent a year abroad at University of Chicago and Princeton as a Harkness Fellow) and the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, he founded the Mathematics Department and Mathematics Research Centre at the new University of Warwick in 1964. In his own words:"I was 38 and had developed some fairly strong ideas on how to run a department and create a Mathematics Institute: I wanted to combine the flexibility of options that are common in most American universities, with the kind of tutorial care to be found in Oxford and Cambridge" [E.C.Zeeman, Mathematical Association President's report, 2004, [http://www.m-a.org.uk/annual_reports/annual_report_200304/] ] Zeeman's style of leadership was informal, but inspirational, and he rapidly took Warwick to international recognition for the quality of its mathematical research. The first six appointments he made were all in topology, enabling the department to immediately become internationally competitive, followed by six in algebra, and finally six in analysis and six in applied mathematics. He was able to trade four academic appointments for funding that enabled PhD students to give undergraduate supervisions in groups of two for the first two years, in a manner similar to the tutorial system at Oxford and Cambridge. He remained at Warwick until 1988, but from 1966 to 1967 he was a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley, after which his research turned to dynamical systems, inspired by many of the world leaders in this field, including Stephen Smale and René Thom, who both spent time at Warwick. Zeeman subsequently spent a sabbatical with Thom at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in Paris, where he became interested in catastrophe theory. On his return to Warwick, he taught an undergraduate course in Catastrophe Theory which became immensely popular with students; his lectures generally were "standing room only".

Zeeman was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1975, and was awarded the Society's Faraday Medal in 1988. He was the 63rd President of the London Mathematical Society in 1986-88 giving his Presidential Address on 18 November 1988 "On the classification of dynamical systems". He was awarded the Senior Whitehead Prize of the Society in 1982. He was the Society's first Forder lecturer, involving a lecture tour in New Zealand, in 1987.

In 1978, Zeeman gave the televised series of Christmas Lectures at the Royal Institution. From these grew the 'Mathematics Master classes' for 13-year old children that now flourish in forty centres in the United Kingdom. [cite web|url=http://www.rigb.org/events/programmeformaths_second.jsp|title=Events programme for maths, Secondary Mathematics Masterclasses|accessdate=2008-01-02]

In 1988, Zeeman became Principal of Hertford College, Oxford. He received a knighthood in 1991 for "mathematical excellence and service to British mathematics and mathematics education". On Friday 6 May 2005, the University of Warwick's new Mathematics and Statistics building was named the Zeeman building in his honour. In September 2006, it was announced that the London Mathematical Society and the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications will award him the , in recognition of his long and distinguished service to mathematics and the mathematical community. [cite web
url = http://www.lms.ac.uk/newsletter/352/352_03.html
title = Honours and Awards Newsletter
author = London Mathematical Society
accessdate = 2007-07-08] The medal is awarded triennially, and Zeeman will be the second ever recipient of the award.

The "Christopher Zeeman Medal for Communication of Mathematics" of the London Mathematical Society and the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications is named in Zeeman's honour [cite web|title=The Christopher Zeeman Medal for Communication of Mathematics|url = http://www.ima.org.uk/news/christopher_zeeman_medal.htm|accessdate = 2008-01-02] . The award aims 'to honour mathematicians who have excelled in promoting mathematics and engaging with the general public. They may be academic mathematicians based in universities, mathematics school teachers, industrial mathematicians, those working in the financial sector or indeed mathematicians from any number of other fields'.

ee also

* Stallings-Zeeman theorem

References

External links

*MacTutor Biography|id=Zeeman
* [http://at.yorku.ca/i/a/a/h/14.htm Interview in CIM Bulletin]
* [http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/References/Zeeman.html Three references for further reading]
* [http://zakuski.math.utsa.edu/~gokhman/ecz/bib.html Bibliography]
* Zeeman's Catastrophe Machine
** [http://lagrange.physics.drexel.edu/flash/zcm Zeeman's Catastrophe Machine in Flash]
** [http://www.ams.org/featurecolumn/archive/cusp1.html AMS - The Catastrophe Machine]
** [http://www.math.sunysb.edu/~tony/whatsnew/column/catastrophe-0600/cusp4.html Doctor Zeeman's Original Catastrophe Machine]
* "The Cusp of Catastrophe: René Thom, Christopher Zeeman and Denis Postle" in "Maps of the Mind" Charles Hampden-Turner. Collier Books, 1981. ISBN 978-0855332938
*