Heisuke Hironaka
| Heisuke Hironaka | |
|---|---|
| Born |
April 9, 1931 Yuu-chō, Kuga-Gun, Yamaguchi, Japan (modern-day Iwakuni, Yamaguchi, Japan) |
| Nationality | Japanese |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions |
Brandeis University Harvard University Columbia University Kyoto University |
| Alma mater | Kyoto University, Harvard University |
| Doctoral advisor | Oscar Zariski |
| Doctoral students |
William Haboush Allen Tannenbaum Bernard Teissier Dave Bayer |
| Notable awards |
Asahi Prize (1967) Fields Medal (1970) Order of Culture (1975) Legion of Honour (2004) |
Heisuke Hironaka (広中 平祐 Hironaka Heisuke?, born April 9, 1931) is a Japanese mathematician. He entered Kyoto University in 1949. After completing his undergraduate studies at Kyoto University, he received his Ph.D. in 1960 from Harvard while under the direction of Oscar Zariski. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1970.
He is celebrated for proving in 1964 that singularities of algebraic varieties admit resolutions in characteristic zero. This means that any algebraic variety can be replaced by (more precisely is birationally equivalent to) a similar variety which has no singularities. He also introduced Hironaka's example showing that a deformation of Kähler manifolds need not be Kähler.
Hironaka was for many years a Professor of mathematics at Harvard University (1968-1992) but currently lives in Japan. He held teaching positions at Brandeis University (1960-1963), Columbia University (1964) and Kyoto University (1975-1988). He was a president of Yamaguchi University (1996-2002). He has been active in raising funds for causes such as mathematical education.
...
Wikipedia