Miles Anthony Reid FRS (born 30 January 1948) is a mathematician who works in

algebraic geometry Algebraic geometry is a branch of mathematics which uses abstract algebraic techniques, mainly from commutative algebra, to solve geometry, geometrical problems. Classically, it studies zero of a function, zeros of multivariate polynomials; th ...

Education

Reid studied the

Cambridge Mathematical Tripos The Mathematical Tripos is the mathematics course that is taught in the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. Origin In its classical nineteenth-century form, the tripos was a distinctive written examination of undergraduate s ...

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any ...

and obtained his Ph.D. in 1973 under the supervision of Peter Swinnerton-Dyer and

Pierre Deligne Pierre René, Viscount Deligne (; born 3 October 1944) is a Belgian mathematician. He is best known for work on the Weil conjectures, leading to a complete proof in 1973. He is the winner of the 2013 Abel Prize, 2008 Wolf Prize, 1988 Crafoor ...

Career

Reid was a research fellow of

Christ's College, Cambridge Christ's College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college includes the Master, the Fellows of the College, and about 450 undergraduate and 250 graduate students. The c ...

from 1973 to 1978. He became a lecturer at the

University of Warwick The University of Warwick ( ; abbreviated as ''Warw.'' in post-nominal letters) is a public research university on the outskirts of Coventry between the West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. The university was founded in 1965 as part of ...

in 1978 and was appointed professor there in 1992. He has written two well known books: ''Undergraduate Algebraic Geometry'' and ''Undergraduate Commutative Algebra''.

Awards and honours

Reid 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 2002. In the same year, he participated as an Invited Speaker in the

International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the IMU Abacus Medal (known before ...

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

. Reid was awarded the

Senior Berwick Prize The Berwick Prize and Senior Berwick Prize are two prizes 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 Stat ...

in 2006 for his paper with Alessio Corti and Aleksandr Pukhlikov, "Fano 3-fold hypersurfaces", which made a big advance in the study of 3-dimensional

algebraic varieties Algebraic varieties are the central objects of study in algebraic geometry, a sub-field of mathematics. Classically, an algebraic variety is defined as the set of solutions of a system of polynomial equations over the real or complex numbers. ...

. In 2023 he was awarded the

Sylvester Medal The Sylvester Medal is a bronze medal awarded by the Royal Society for the encouragement of mathematical research, and accompanied by a £1,000 prize. It was named in honour of James Joseph Sylvester, the Savilian chair of geometry, Savilian Prof ...

of the Royal Society.Sylvester Medal 2023
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Personal life

Reid speaks Japanese and

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

and has given lectures in Japanese.

Bibliography

His most famous book is *''Undergraduate Algebraic Geometry'', Cambridge University Press 1988 () Other books *''Undergraduate Commutative Algebra'', Cambridge University Press 1995, *with Balazs Szendroi: ''Geometry and Topology'', Cambridge University Press 2007 His most famous translation is the two volume work by Shafarevich *''Basic Algebraic Geometry 1'', Springer 1972 () *''Basic Algebraic Geometry 2'', Springer 1977 () And he has also translated Matsumura's *''Commutative Ring Theory'', Cambridge University Press 1987,

References

1948 births Living people People from Hoddesdon 20th-century English mathematicians 21st-century English mathematicians Algebraic geometers Fellows of Christ's College, Cambridge Fellows of the Royal Society Academics of the University of Warwick Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Textbook writers {{UK-mathematician-stub