Kodaira Kunihiko
| Kunihiko Kodaira | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
March 16, 1915 Tokyo, Japan |
| Died | July 26, 1997 (aged 82) Kōfu, Japan |
| Nationality | Japanese |
| Alma mater | University of Tokyo |
| Known for | Algebraic geometry, complex manifolds |
| Awards |
Fields Medal (1954) Wolf Prize (1984/5) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions |
University of Tokyo Institute for Advanced Study Johns Hopkins University Stanford University |
| Doctoral advisor | Shokichi Iyanaga |
| Doctoral students |
Walter Baily Shigeru Iitaka Arnold Kas James Morrow John Wavrik |
Kunihiko Kodaira (小平 邦彦 Kodaira Kunihiko, 16 March 1915 – 26 July 1997) was a Japanese mathematician known for distinguished work in algebraic geometry and the theory of complex manifolds, and as the founder of the Japanese school of algebraic geometers. He was awarded a Fields Medal in 1954, being the first Japanese national to receive this honour.
He was born in Tokyo. He graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1938 with a degree in mathematics and also graduated from the physics department at the University of Tokyo in 1941. During the war years he worked in isolation, but was able to master Hodge theory as it then stood. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo in 1949, with a thesis entitled Harmonic fields in Riemannian manifolds. He was involved in cryptographic work from about 1944, while holding an academic post in Tokyo.
In 1949 he travelled to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey at the invitation of Hermann Weyl. At this time the foundations of Hodge theory were being brought in line with contemporary technique in operator theory. Kodaira rapidly became involved in exploiting the tools it opened up in algebraic geometry, adding sheaf theory as it became available. This work was particularly influential, for example on Hirzebruch.
In a second research phase, Kodaira wrote a long series of papers in collaboration with D. C. Spencer, founding the deformation theory of complex structures on manifolds. This gave the possibility of constructions of moduli spaces, since in general such structures depend continuously on parameters. It also identified the sheaf cohomology groups, for the sheaf associated with the holomorphic tangent bundle, that carried the basic data about the dimension of the moduli space, and obstructions to deformations. This theory is still foundational, and also had an influence on the (technically very different) scheme theory of Grothendieck. Spencer then continued this work, applying the techniques to structures other than complex ones, such as G-structures.
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