Sun-Yung Alice Chang (, hak, Chông Sṳn-yùng, ; born 1948) is a

Taiwanese American Taiwanese Americans () are Americans who carry full or partial ancestry from Taiwan. This includes American-born citizens who descend from migrants from Taiwan. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, 49% of Taiwanese Americans lived in the state of Califo ...

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

specializing in aspects of

mathematical analysis Analysis is the branch of mathematics dealing with continuous functions, limit (mathematics), limits, and related theories, such as Derivative, differentiation, Integral, integration, measure (mathematics), measure, infinite sequences, series (m ...

ranging from harmonic analysis and partial differential equations to differential geometry. She is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Mathematics at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

Life

Chang was born in Xian, China in 1948 and grew up in

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in 1970 from

National Taiwan University National Taiwan University (NTU; ) is a public research university in Taipei, Taiwan. The university was founded in 1928 during Japanese rule as the seventh of the Imperial Universities. It was named Taihoku Imperial University and served d ...

, and her doctorate in 1974 from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. At Berkeley, Chang wrote her thesis on the study of bounded

analytic functions In mathematics, an analytic function is a function that is locally given by a convergent power series. There exist both real analytic functions and complex analytic functions. Functions of each type are infinitely differentiable, but complex ...

. Chang became a full professor at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...

in 1980 before moving to

Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ni ...

in 1998.

Career and research

Chang's research interests include the study of geometric types of

nonlinear partial differential equation In mathematics and physics, a nonlinear partial differential equation is a partial differential equation with nonlinear terms. They describe many different physical systems, ranging from gravitation to fluid dynamics, and have been used in mathe ...

s and problems in isospectral geometry. Working with her husband Paul Yang and others, she produced contributions to differential equations in relation to geometry and

topology In mathematics, topology (from the Greek words , and ) is concerned with the properties of a geometric object that are preserved under continuous deformations, such as stretching, twisting, crumpling, and bending; that is, without closing ...

. She teaches at Princeton University as of 1998. Before that, she held visiting positions at University of California-Berkeley; Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J.; and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland. She served at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology as a visiting professor in 2015. In 2004, she was interviewed by Yu Kiang Leong for ''Creative Minds, Charmed Lives: Interviews at Institute for Mathematical Sciences, National University of Singapore'', and she declared:

''«In the mathematical community, we should leave room for people who want to do work in their own way. Mathematical research is not just a scientific approach; the nature of mathematics is sometimes close to that of art. Some people want individual character and an individual way of working things out. They should be appreciated too. There should be room for single research and collaborative research».''

Chang's life was profiled in the 2017 documentary film ''Girls who fell in love with Math''.

Service and honors

Sloan Foundation The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is an American philanthropic nonprofit organization. It was established in 1934 by Alfred P. Sloan Jr., then-president and chief executive officer of General Motors. The Sloan Foundation makes grants to support o ...

Research Fellowship, 1979–1981 *

Invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians This is a list of International Congresses of Mathematicians Plenary and Invited Speakers. Being invited to talk at an International Congress of Mathematicians has been called "the equivalent, in this community, of an induction to a hall of fame." ...

in Berkeley, 1986 *Vice president of the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

, 1989-1991 *

Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize in Mathematics The Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize in Mathematics, also called the Satter Prize, is one of twenty-one prizes given out by the American Mathematical Society (AMS). It is presented biennially in recognition of an outstanding contribution to mathematics ...

of the

, 1995 * Guggenheim Fellowship, 1998 *Plenary Speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Beijing, 2002 *Member,

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

, 2008 * Honorary Degree, UPMC, 2013 *Fellow, National Academy of Sciences, 2009 *Fellow, Academia Sinica, 2012 *Fellow,

, 2015 *Fellow,

Association for Women in Mathematics The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) is a professional society whose mission is to encourage women and girls to study and to have active careers in the mathematical sciences, and to promote equal opportunity for and the equal treatment o ...

, 2019 * MSRI Simons Professor, 2015-2016

Publications

*Chang, Sun-Yung A.; Yang, Paul C. ''Conformal deformation of metrics on

S^2

''. J. Differential Geom. 27 (1988), no. 2, 259–296. *Chang, Sun-Yung Alice; Yang, Paul C. ''Prescribing Gaussian curvature on

S^2

''. Acta Math. 159 (1987), no. 3–4, 215–259. *Chang, Sun-Yung A.; Yang, Paul C. ''Extremal metrics of zeta function determinants on 4-manifolds.'' Ann. of Math. (2) 142 (1995), no. 1, 171–212. *Chang, Sun-Yung A.; Gursky, Matthew J.; Yang, Paul C. ''The scalar curvature equation on 2- and 3-spheres.'' Calc. Var. Partial Differential Equations 1 (1993), no. 2, 205–229. *Chang, Sun-Yung A.; Gursky, Matthew J.; Yang, Paul C. ''An equation of Monge-Ampère type in conformal geometry, and four-manifolds of positive Ricci curvature''. Ann. of Math. (2) 155 (2002), no. 3, 709–787. *Chang, S.-Y. A.; Wilson, J. M.; Wolff, T. H. ''Some weighted norm inequalities concerning the Schrödinger operators.'' Comment. Math. Helv. 60 (1985), no. 2, 217–246. *Carleson, Lennart; Chang, Sun-Yung A. ''On the existence of an extremal function for an inequality of J. Moser''. Bull. Sci. Math. (2) 110 (1986), no. 2, 113–127. *Chang, Sun-Yung A.; Fefferman, Robert ''Some recent developments in Fourier analysis and

H^p

-theory on product domains''. Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.) 12 (1985), no. 1, 1–43. *Chang, Sun-Yung A.; Fefferman, Robert ''A continuous version of duality of

H^1

with BMO on the bidisc.'' Ann. of Math. (2) 112 (1980), no. 1, 179–201.

References

External links

*
AWM Fellows List 2019
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Chang, Sun-Yung Alice Princeton University faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Living people 1948 births American women mathematicians Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Fellows of the Association for Women in Mathematics 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians People from Xi'an National Taiwan University alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni University of California, Los Angeles faculty Mathematicians from Shaanxi American people of Chinese descent Chinese women mathematicians Taiwanese people from Shaanxi 20th-century women mathematicians 21st-century women mathematicians Educators from Shaanxi 20th-century American women 21st-century American women Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences