Simon Donaldson

Simon Kirwan Donaldson (born August 20, 1957, in Cambridge, England), is an English mathematician famous for his work on the topology of smooth (differentiable) four-dimensional manifolds. He is now a Chair on Pure Mathematics and President of Institute for Mathematical Science at Imperial College London where he holds a professorship. Donaldson gained a BA degree in mathematics from Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1979, and in 1980 began postgrad... more

Simon Kirwan Donaldson (born August 20, 1957, in Cambridge, England), is an English mathematician famous for his work on the topology of smooth (differentiable) four-dimensional manifolds. He is now a Chair on Pure Mathematics and President of Institute for Mathematical Science at Imperial College London where he holds a professorship. Donaldson gained a BA degree in mathematics from Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1979, and in 1980 began postgraduate work at Worcester College, Oxford, at first under Nigel Hitchin and later under Michael Atiyah's supervision. Still a graduate student, Donaldson soon proved in 1982 a result that would establish his fame. He published the result in a paper Self-dual connections and the topology of smooth 4-manifolds which appeared in 1983. In the words of Atiyah, the paper "stunned the mathematical world". Whereas Michael Freedman classified topological four-manifolds, Donaldson's work focused on four-manifolds admitting a differentiable structure, using... less