Robion Cromwell Kirby (born February 25, 1938) is a

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professor ...

of Mathematics at 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 ...

who specializes in

low-dimensional topology In mathematics, low-dimensional topology is the branch of topology that studies manifolds, or more generally topological spaces, of four or fewer dimensions. Representative topics are the structure theory of 3-manifolds and 4-manifolds, knot the ...

. Together with

Laurent C. Siebenmann Laurent Carl Siebenmann (the first name is sometimes spelled Laurence or Larry) (born 1939) is a Canadian mathematician based at the Université de Paris-Sud at Orsay, France. After working for several years as a Professor at Orsay he became a Di ...

he invented the Kirby–Siebenmann invariant for classifying the piecewise linear structures on a

topological manifold In topology, a branch of mathematics, a topological manifold is a topological space that locally resembles real ''n''- dimensional Euclidean space. Topological manifolds are an important class of topological spaces, with applications throughout ma ...

. He also proved the fundamental result on the Kirby calculus, a method for describing 3-manifolds and smooth

4-manifold In mathematics, a 4-manifold is a 4-dimensional topological manifold. A smooth 4-manifold is a 4-manifold with a smooth structure. In dimension four, in marked contrast with lower dimensions, topological and smooth manifolds are quite different. ...

s by surgery on framed links. Along with his significant mathematical contributions, he has over 50 doctoral students and his problem list. He received his Ph.D. from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

in 1965. He soon became an assistant professor at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a Normal school, teachers colle ...

. While there he developed his " torus trick" which enabled him to solve, in dimensions greater than four (with additional joint work with Siebenmann), four of

John Milnor John Willard Milnor (born February 20, 1931) is an American mathematician known for his work in differential topology, algebraic K-theory and low-dimensional holomorphic dynamical systems. Milnor is a distinguished professor at Stony Brook Un ...

's seven most important problems in geometric topology. In 1971, he was awarded the Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry by 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 ...

. In 1995 he became the first mathematician to receive the

NAS Award for Scientific Reviewing The NAS Award for Scientific Reviewing is awarded by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences "to recognize authors whose reviews have synthesized extensive and difficult material, rendering a significant service to science and influencing the course ...

from the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, 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 Nat ...

for his problem list in low-dimensional topology. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2001. In 2012 he became a fellow of the

. Kirby is also the President of Mathematical Sciences Publishers, a small non-profit academic publishing house that focuses on mathematics and engineering journals.

Books

* *

References

External links

*Kirby'
home page
*Kirby'
list of problems in low dimensional topology
(This is a large 380 page gzipped ps file.)

from th
Proceedings of the Kirbyfest
in honour of his 60th birthday in 1998. * *

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kirby, Robion 1938 births Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Topologists Living people University of Chicago alumni University of California, Los Angeles faculty University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Mathematicians from Illinois Scientists from Chicago