Graeme Bryce Segal FRS (born 21 December 1941) is an Australian

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, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

, and professor at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

Biography

Segal was educated at the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD) is a public university, public research university in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in both Australia and Oceania. One of Australia's six sandstone universities, it was one of the ...

, where he received his BSc degree in 1961. He went on to receive his D.Phil. in 1967 from St Catherine's College, Oxford; his thesis, written under the supervision of Michael Atiyah, was titled ''Equivariant K-theory''. His thesis was in the area of equivariant K-theory. The Atiyah–Segal completion theorem in that subject was a major motivation for the Segal conjecture, which he formulated. He has made many other contributions to homotopy theory in the past four decades, including an approach to infinite loop spaces. He was also a pioneer of elliptic cohomology, which is related to his interest in topological quantum field theory. Segal was an Invited Speaker at the ICM in 1970 in Nice and in 1990 in Kyoto. He was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

in 1982 and an Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He was awarded the Sylvester Medal by the Royal Society in 2010. He was Lowndean Professor of Astronomy and Geometry at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

from 1990 to 1999. Segal was elected the President of the

London Mathematical Society The London Mathematical Society (LMS) is one of the United Kingdom's Learned society, learned societies for mathematics (the others being the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA), the Edinburgh ...

in 2011. He is married to writer Marina Warner. They live in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

Books

* ''Loop Groups'' (Oxford Mathematical Monographs). New ed. Clarendon Press, Oxford 2003, (with Andrew Pressley). * ''Lectures on

Lie group In mathematics, a Lie group (pronounced ) is a group (mathematics), group that is also a differentiable manifold, such that group multiplication and taking inverses are both differentiable. A manifold is a space that locally resembles Eucli ...

s and Lie algebras'' (London Mathematical Society Student texts Vol. 32). 5th ed. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2006, (with Ian G. Macdonald and Roger Carter).

References

External links

Dr Graeme Segal FRS
, Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford *
Topology, Geometry and Quantum Field Theory
Proceedings of the 2002 Oxford Symposium in Honour of the 60th Birthday of Graeme Segal. 1942 births Living people University of Sydney alumni Alumni of St Catherine's College, Oxford 20th-century British mathematicians 21st-century British mathematicians Topologists Fellows of Worcester College, Oxford Fellows of St Catherine's College, Oxford Fellows of All Souls College, Oxford Fellows of St John's College, Cambridge Cambridge mathematicians Fellows of the Royal Society Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars Lowndean Professors of Astronomy and Geometry Presidents of the London Mathematical Society {{UK-mathematician-stub