Professor Sir Michael Atiyah

Michael Francis Atiyah grew up in Sudan and Egypt before returning to the U.K. to complete his higher education. He obtained his B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Cambridge U.K., and completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Cambridge and the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University USA.

One of the greatest living mathematicians, Sir Michael Atiyah’s first major contribution was the development (with Hirzebruch) of the K-theory, a versatile topologic technique, which led to the solution of many outstanding problems in mathematics. He then developed (with Singer) the “Atiyah-Singer index theorem,” an important theorem that deals with a number of solutions of elliptic differential equations. That theorem later proved to be useful in theoretical physics, such as constructing solutions of certain partial differential equations giving “instantons”. Atiyah analyzed the global geometry of Yang-Mills fields and of general gauge theories. Overall, his work provided a deeper insight and understanding of both quantum field theory and general relativity. He published 15 books while most of his research was included in six volumes of Atiyah’s collected papers (except for his commutative algebra textbook and his later works).

Sir Michael was the Savilian Professor of Geometry and Fellow of St. Catherine’s College at Oxford University. He was also professor at Cambridge and Princeton Universities and visiting professor at Harvard, Yale, Chicago and other leading universities.

Sir Michael Atiya received many prestigious awards, medals and decorations, including the renowned Fields medal, the Royal Medal, and the De Morgan Medal of the London Mathematical Society. He was awarded honorary doctorate degrees by more than 30 universities and honorary fellowships of scientific academies in more than 20 countries. Atiya was knighted in 1983.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.