Michael Atiyah

Sir Michael Atiyah OM FRS FRSE FMedSci FREng
Michael Atiyah in 2007.
Personal details
Born	Michael Francis Atiyah (1929-04-22) 22 April 1929 (age 87) Hampstead, London, England, United Kingdom
Nationality	British
Residence	United Kingdom
Known for	Atiyah–Singer index theorem Atiyah–Segal completion theorem
Awards	Berwick Prize (1961) Fields Medal (1966) Royal Medal (1968) De Morgan Medal (1980) Copley Medal (1988) Abel Prize (2004) HonFREng (1993)
Scientific career
Institutions	Pembroke College, Cambridge New College, Oxford Institute for Advanced Study University of Leicester University of Edinburgh
Education	Victoria College, Alexandria Manchester Grammar School
Alma mater	University of Cambridge (BA, PhD)
Thesis	Some Applications of Topological Methods in Algebraic Geometry (1955)
Doctoral advisor	W. V. D. Hodge
Doctoral students	Peter Braam Simon Donaldson K. David Elworthy Nigel Hitchin Lisa Jeffrey Frances Kirwan Peter Kronheimer Ruth Lawrence George Lusztig Ian R. Porteous Brian Sanderson Graeme Segal David O. Tall
Other notable students	Edward Witten

Sir Michael Francis Atiyah OM FRS FRSE FMedSci FREng (/əˈtiːə/; born 22 April 1929) is an English mathematician specialising in geometry.

Atiyah grew up in Sudan and Egypt and spent most of his academic life in the United Kingdom at Oxford and Cambridge, and in the United States at the Institute for Advanced Study. He has been president of the Royal Society (1990–1995), master of Trinity College, Cambridge (1990–1997), chancellor of the University of Leicester (1995–2005), and president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2005–2008). Since 1997, he has been an honorary professor at the University of Edinburgh.

Atiyah's mathematical collaborators include Raoul Bott, Friedrich Hirzebruch and Isadore Singer, and his students include Graeme Segal, Nigel Hitchin and Simon Donaldson. Together with Hirzebruch, he laid the foundations for topological K-theory, an important tool in algebraic topology, which, informally speaking, describes ways in which spaces can be twisted. His best known result, the Atiyah–Singer index theorem, was proved with Singer in 1963 and is widely used in counting the number of independent solutions to differential equations. Some of his more recent work was inspired by theoretical physics, in particular instantons and monopoles, which are responsible for some subtle corrections in quantum field theory. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1966, the Copley Medal in 1988, and the Abel Prize in 2004.