Robion Kirby

Robion Kirby
Kirby in 2009
Born (1938-02-25) February 25, 1938 (age 86)
Chicago, Illinois, US
Alma materUniversity of Chicago
Known forKirby–Siebenmann class
Kirby calculus
AwardsOswald Veblen Prize in Geometry (1971)
NAS Award for Scientific Reviewing (1995)
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsUniversity of California, Berkeley
ThesisSmoothing Locally Flat Imbeddings (1965)
Doctoral advisorEldon Dyer [de]
Doctoral students

Robion Cromwell Kirby (born February 25, 1938) is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley who specializes in low-dimensional topology. Together with Laurent C. Siebenmann he developed the Kirby–Siebenmann invariant for classifying the piecewise linear structures on a topological manifold. He also proved the fundamental result on the Kirby calculus, a method for describing 3-manifolds and smooth 4-manifolds by surgery on framed links. Along with his significant mathematical contributions, he has over 50 doctoral students and is the editor of an influential problem list.[1]

  1. ^ Kirby, Rob, ed. (December 22, 1995), Problems in Low-Dimensional Topology (PDF), retrieved October 8, 2023