Mu-Tao Wang () is a Taiwanese mathematician who is a professor of mathematics at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

Education

In 1984, Wang enrolled in

National Taiwan University National Taiwan University (NTU; zh, t=國立臺灣大學, poj=Kok-li̍p Tâi-oân Tāi-ha̍k, p=, s=) is a National university, national Public university, public research university in Taipei, Taiwan. Founded in 1928 during Taiwan under J ...

(NTU) with the initial intent to study

international business International business refers to the trade of goods and service goods, services, technology, capital and/or knowledge across national borders and at a global or transnational scale. It includes all commercial activities that promote the transfer o ...

but, after a year, he switched to mathematics. He graduated from NTU with his

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

(B.S.) in 1988 and his

Master of Science A Master of Science (; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree. In contrast to the Master of Arts degree, the Master of Science degree is typically granted for studies in sciences, engineering and medici ...

(M.S.) in 1992, both in mathematics. Wang then completed advanced studies in the United States, where he earned his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in mathematics in 1998 from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

. His doctoral dissertation was titled, "Generalized harmonic maps and representations of discrete groups," was by supervised by

Fields Medal The Fields Medal is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of Mathematicians, International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place e ...

ist laureate

Shing-Tung Yau Shing-Tung Yau (; ; born April 4, 1949) is a Chinese-American mathematician. He is the director of the Yau Mathematical Sciences Center at Tsinghua University and professor emeritus at Harvard University. Until 2022, Yau was the William Caspar ...

Career

Wang joined the Columbia faculty as an assistant professor in 2001, and was appointed full professor in 2009. Before joining the faculty at Columbia, Wang was Szego Assistant Professor at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

. He was a Sloan Research Fellow from 2003 to 2005. In 2007, he was named a Kavli Fellow of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

and was awarded the Chern Prize. Wang is a Fellow 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, ...

and won the Morningside Gold Medal of Mathematics in 2010. In 2010, Wang delivered the plenary address at the International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians, and was plenary speaker at the

International Congress on Mathematical Physics The International Congress on Mathematical Physics (ICMP) is the largest research congress in mathematical physics. It is held every three years, on behalf of the International Association of Mathematical Physics (IAMP). Prizes The Henri Poin ...

. In addition, he was also plenary speaker at the International Conference on Differential Geometry in 2011. He was elected to

Academia Sinica Academia Sinica (AS, ; zh, t=中央研究院) is the national academy of the Taiwan, Republic of China. It is headquartered in Nangang District, Taipei, Nangang, Taipei. Founded in Nanjing, the academy supports research activities in mathemat ...

in 2022. After winning the Morningside Medal, Wang told interviewers that he did not consider himself a particularly good student and did not consistently make good grades. He struggled with studying topics which did not interest him just for the grade, but spends a lot of time on subjects which interested him. He credits his career in mathematics to two people: his mother and his thesis adviser Shing-Tung Yau. He cites his mother's support and understanding of his decision to switch to mathematics in university despite it being a much less lucrative field, and describes meeting Yau in 1992 as the pivotal point in his life when he decided to make mathematics research his primary focus.

Work

Wang's research is focused in the fields of

differential geometry Differential geometry is a Mathematics, mathematical discipline that studies the geometry of smooth shapes and smooth spaces, otherwise known as smooth manifolds. It uses the techniques of Calculus, single variable calculus, vector calculus, lin ...

and

mathematical physics Mathematical physics is the development of mathematics, mathematical methods for application to problems in physics. The ''Journal of Mathematical Physics'' defines the field as "the application of mathematics to problems in physics and the de ...

, specifically

general relativity General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity, and as Einstein's theory of gravity, is the differential geometry, geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of grav ...

. He has studied higher co-dimensional

mean curvature flow In the field of differential geometry in mathematics, mean curvature flow is an example of a geometric flow of hypersurfaces in a Riemannian manifold (for example, smooth surfaces in 3-dimensional Euclidean space). Intuitively, a family of sur ...

extensively, leading to criteria relating to the flow's existence, regularity, and convergence. In the field of general relativity, he is especially known for his work on quasilocal mass–energy; the Wang-Yau quasi-local mass is named in his honor.

Selected bibliography

*"A fixed point theorem of isometry action on

Riemannian manifold In differential geometry, a Riemannian manifold is a geometric space on which many geometric notions such as distance, angles, length, volume, and curvature are defined. Euclidean space, the N-sphere, n-sphere, hyperbolic space, and smooth surf ...

s", Journal of Differential Geometry 50 (1998), no. 2, 249-267 *"Mean curvature flow of surfaces in Einstein four-manifolds", Journal of Differential Geometry 57 (2001), no. 2, 301-338 *"Long-time existence and convergence of graphic mean curvature flow in arbitrary codimension", Inventiones Mathematicae 148 (2002), no. 3, 525-543 *(with Knut Smoczyk) "Mean curvature flows of Lagrangian submanifolds with convex potentials", Journal of Differential Geometry 62 (2002), no. 2, 243-257 *"The Dirichlet problem for the minimal surface system in arbitrary codimension", Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics 57 (2004), no. 2, 267-281 *(with

) "Isometric embeddings into the Minkowski space and new quasi-local mass", Communications in Mathematical Physics 288 (2009), no. 3, 919-942 *(with Ivana Medoš) "Deforming symplectomorphisms of complex projective spaces by the mean curvature flow", Journal of Differential Geometry 87 (2011), no. 2, 309-342 *(with

Simon Brendle Simon Brendle (born June 1981) is a German-American mathematician working in differential geometry and nonlinear partial differential equations. At the age of 19, he received his Dr. rer. nat. from Tübingen University under the supervision of Ge ...

and Pei-Ken Hung) "A Minkowski type inequality for hypersurfaces in the Anti-de Sitter-Schwarzschild manifold", Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics *(with Po-Ning Chen and

) "Quasilocal angular momentum and center of mass in general relativity", arXiv:1312.0990

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Wang, Mu-Tao Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Columbia University faculty Differential geometers Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Mathematical physicists National Taiwan University alumni 20th-century Taiwanese mathematicians 21st-century Taiwanese mathematicians Members of Academia Sinica