Chern Institute Of Mathematics
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The Chern Institute of Mathematics ( Chinese: 南开大学陈省身数学研究所;
pinyin Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. ''Hanyu'' () literally means 'Han Chinese, Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while ''pinyin' ...
: Nánkāi Dàxué Chén Xǐngshēn Shùxué Yánjiūsuǒ) is a research institute at
Nankai University Nankai University is a public university in Tianjin, China. It is affiliated with the Ministry of Education of China. The university is part of Project 211, Project 985, and the Double First-Class Construction. Nankai University was establ ...
in
Tianjin Tianjin is a direct-administered municipality in North China, northern China on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It is one of the National Central City, nine national central cities, with a total population of 13,866,009 inhabitants at the time of the ...
, China. The Institute pursues both pure and applied mathematical research and aims to promote mathematics in China.


History

Shiing-Shen Chern Shiing-Shen Chern (; , ; October 26, 1911 – December 3, 2004) was a Chinese American mathematician and poet. He made fundamental contributions to differential geometry and topology. He has been called the "father of modern differential geome ...
was invited by China's
Ministry of Education An education ministry is a national or subnational government agency politically responsible for education. Various other names are commonly used to identify such agencies, such as Ministry of Education, Department of Education, and Ministry of Pub ...
to establish a new mathematics research institute at
Nankai University Nankai University is a public university in Tianjin, China. It is affiliated with the Ministry of Education of China. The university is part of Project 211, Project 985, and the Double First-Class Construction. Nankai University was establ ...
in 1984, two years after Chern had co-founded the Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute (formerly the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute) in California. The Institute was originally named the Nankai Research Institute of Mathematics and was formally opened on 17 October 1985. Chern's guiding principle for the Institute was, "based at Nankai, serving the country, and embracing the world." Chern served as the inaugural director of the Institute until 1992. Mathematician Guoding Hu served initially as the vice director before taking over from Chern and serving as the director from April 1992 to March 1996. During his time as director, Chern donated over 10,000 books to the Institute and also prize money of $50,000 from having been awarded the
Wolf Prize in Mathematics The Wolf Prize in Mathematics is awarded almost annually by the Wolf Foundation in Israel. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation and awarded since 1978; the others are in Agriculture, Chemistry, Medicine, Physics and Arts. ...
in 1984. Chern died on 3 December 2004 and the Institute was subsequently renamed in his honour as the Chern Institute of Mathematics.


Theoretical Physics Division

At Chern's request, Yang Chen-Ning established a Theoretical Physics Division at the Institute in 1986. The initial major research direction within the Division was
Yang–Mills theory Yang–Mills theory is a quantum field theory for nuclear binding devised by Chen Ning Yang and Robert Mills in 1953, as well as a generic term for the class of similar theories. The Yang–Mills theory is a gauge theory based on a special un ...
and the
Yang–Baxter equation In physics, the Yang–Baxter equation (or star–triangle relation) is a consistency equation which was first introduced in the field of statistical mechanics. It depends on the idea that in some scattering situations, particles may preserve their ...
. Many physicists and mathematicians from around the world have visited and given lectures at the Division, including
Michael Atiyah Sir Michael Francis Atiyah (; 22 April 1929 – 11 January 2019) was a British-Lebanese mathematician specialising in geometry. His contributions include the Atiyah–Singer index theorem and co-founding topological K-theory. He was awarded the ...
and
Freeman Dyson Freeman John Dyson (15 December 1923 – 28 February 2020) was a British-American theoretical physics, theoretical physicist and mathematician known for his works in quantum field theory, astrophysics, random matrix, random matrices, math ...
.


Visiting Scholars Program

In May 2005, the Institute established the Visiting Scholars Program to promote communication and cooperation in mathematical research. Mathematicians from China and the rest of the world can apply to the Institute to conduct research there for a maximum of three months. More than 100 international and domestic scholars conduct research under the program each year.


References

{{coord missing, China Research institutes in China Nankai University