Inspired By S S Chern: A Memorial Volume In Honor Of A Great Mathematician

Shiing-Shen Chern (1911-2004) was one of the leading differential geometers of the twentieth century. In 1946, he founded the Mathematical Institute of Academia Sinica in Shanghai, which was later moved to Nanking. In 1981, he founded the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) at Berkeley and acted as the director until 1984. In 1985, he founded the Nankai Institute of Mathematics in Tianjin. He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1975; the Wolf Prize in mathematics in 1984; and the Shaw Prize in mathematical sciences in 2004.Chern's works span all the classic fields of differential geometry: the Chern-Simons theory; the Chern-Weil theory, linking curvature invariants to characteristic classes; Chern classes; and other areas such as projective differential geometry and webs that are mathematically rich but currently have a lower profile. He also published work in integral geometry, value distribution theory of holomorphic functions, and minimal submanifolds.Inspired by Chern and his work, former colleagues, students and friends ¿ themselves highly regarded mathematicians in their own right ¿ come together to honor and celebrate Chern's huge contributions. The volume, organized by Phillip Griffiths of the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), contains contributions by Michael Atiyah (University of Edinburgh), C-M Bai (Nankai), Robert Bryant (Duke University), Kung-Ching Chang (Peking University), Jeff Cheeger (New York University), Simon K Donaldson (Imperial College), H¿ne Esnault (Universit¿Duisburg-Essen), Mo-Lin Ge (Nankai), Mark Green (University of California at Los Angeles), Phillip Griffiths (Institute for Advanced Study), F Reese Harvey (Rice University), Alain H¿ut (Universit¿ordeaux 1), Niky Kamran (McGill University), Bruce Kleiner (Yale), H Blaine Lawson, Jr (Suny at Stony Brook), Yiming Long (Nankai), Xiaonan Ma (UMR 7640 du CNRS), Luc Pirio (IRMAR, France), Graeme Segal (Oxford), Gang Tian (MIT), Jean-Marie Trepreau (Institut de Math¿tiques de Jussieu), Jeff Viaclovsky (MIT), Wei Wang (Nankai), Wentsun Wu (Chinese Academy of Sciences), C N Yang (Tsinghua), Tan Zhang (Murray State University), Weiping Zhang (Nankai) and others.

In Memory of Professor S S Chern (C N Yang); Twisted K-Theory and Cohomology (M Atiyah); Yangian and Its Applications (C-M Bai et al.); Geodesically Reversible Finsler 2-Spheres of Constant Curvature (R L Bryant); Multiple Solutions of the Prescribed Mean Curvature Equation (K C Chang & T Zhang); On the Differentiability of Lipschitz Maps from Metric Measure Spaces to Banach Spaces (J Cheeger & B Kleiner); Two-Forms on Four-Manifolds and Elliptic Equations (S K Donaldson); Partial Connection for p-Torsion Line Bundles in Characteristic p > 0 (H Esnault); Algebraic Cycles and Singularities of Normal Functions, II (M Green & P Griffiths); Planar Web Geometry Through Abelian Relations and Singularities (A Henaut); Transitive Analytic Lie Pseudo-Groups (N Kamran); Stability of Closed Characteristics on Compact Convex Hypersurfaces (Y Long & W Wang); -Invariant and Flat Vector Bundles II (X Ma & W Zhang); On Planar Webs with Infinitesimal Automorphisms (D Marin et al.); Projective Linking and Boundaries of Positive Holomorphic Chains in Projective Manifolds, Part II (F R Harvey & H B Lawson, Jr); Aspects of Metric Geometry of Four Manifolds (G Tian); Algebrisation Des Tissus De Codimension 1: La Generalisation D'un Theoreme De Bol (J-M Trepreau); Conformal Geometry and Fully Nonlinear Equations (J Viaclovsky); Memory of My First Research Teacher: The Great Geometer Chern Shiing-Shen (W Wu); Some Open Gromov-Witten Invariants of the Resolved Conifold (J Zhou).