Raoul Bott

Raoul Bott
Raoul Bott in 1986
Born	(1923-09-24)September 24, 1923 Budapest, Hungary
Died	December 20, 2005(2005-12-20) (aged 82) San Diego, California
Residence	Czechoslovakia United States Canada
Nationality	Hungarian American
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	University of Michigan in Ann Arbor Harvard University
Alma mater	McGill University Carnegie Mellon University
Doctoral advisor	Richard Duffin
Doctoral students	Edward B. Curtis Harold Edwards Nancy Hingston Robert MacPherson Daniel Quillen Stephen Smale András Szenes
Notable awards	Veblen Prize (1964) National Medal of Science (1987) Steele Prize (1990) Wolf Prize (2000)

Raoul Bott, ForMemRS (September 24, 1923 – December 20, 2005) was a Hungarian-American mathematician known for numerous basic contributions to geometry in its broad sense. He is best known for his Bott periodicity theorem, the Morse–Bott functions which he used in this context, and the Borel–Bott–Weil theorem.

Bott was born in Budapest, Hungary, the son of Margit Kovács and Rudolph Bott. His father was of Austrian descent, and his mother was of Hungarian Jewish descent; Bott was raised a Catholic by his mother and stepfather. Bott grew up in Czechoslovakia and spent his working life in the United States. His family emigrated to Canada in 1938, and subsequently he served in the Canadian Army in Europe during World War II.

Bott later went to college at McGill University in Montreal, where he studied electrical engineering. He then earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in 1949. His thesis, titled Electrical Network Theory, was written under the direction of Richard Duffin. Afterward, he began teaching at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Bott continued his study at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He was a professor at Harvard University from 1959 to 1999. In 2005 Bott died of cancer in San Diego.