Shiing-Shen Chern

Shiing-Shen Chern (simplified Chinese: 陈省身; traditional Chinese: 陳省身; pinyin: Chén Xǐngshēn, October 26, 1911 – December 3, 2004) was a Chinese American mathematician, one of the leaders in differential geometry of the twentieth century. Chern was born in Jiaxing in Zhejiang province. He moved to Tianjin in 1922 to be with his father, and starting in 1926 he studied there at Nankai University, graduating in mathematics in 1930. He was a graduate ... more

Shiing-Shen Chern (simplified Chinese: 陈省身; traditional Chinese: 陳省身; pinyin: Chén Xǐngshēn, October 26, 1911 – December 3, 2004) was a Chinese American mathematician, one of the leaders in differential geometry of the twentieth century. Chern was born in Jiaxing in Zhejiang province. He moved to Tianjin in 1922 to be with his father, and starting in 1926 he studied there at Nankai University, graduating in mathematics in 1930. He was a graduate student under Dan Sun at Tsinghua University from 1931 to 1934, working on projective differential geometry. In 1932 Wilhelm Blaschke from the University of Hamburg visited Tsinghua and was impressed with Chern. In 1934 Chern went on a scholarship to Hamburg, working on the Cartan-Kähler theory, and finishing his doctoral degree in 1936. In 1936–1937 he studied with Élie Cartan in Paris, returning to Beijing, China to a professorial position in Tsinghua (which had relocated to Kunming after the Japanese attacks). In 1943 Chern went to the... less