Nicolaas Kuiper

Not to be confused with the astronomer Gerard Kuiper.

Nicolaas Kuiper
Born(1920-06-28)28 June 1920
Rotterdam, Netherlands
Died12 December 1994(1994-12-12) (aged 74)
Heteren, Netherlands
Alma materUniversity of Leiden
Known forKuiper's test
Kuiper's theorem
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsUniversity of Amsterdam
Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques
Doctoral advisorWillem van der Woude
Doctoral studentsEduard Looijenga
Floris Takens

Nicolaas Hendrik Kuiper (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈkœypər]; 28 June 1920 – 12 December 1994) was a Dutch mathematician, known for Kuiper's test and proving Kuiper's theorem. He also contributed to the Nash embedding theorem.

Kuiper studied at University of Leiden in 1937-41, and worked as a secondary school teacher of mathematics in Dordrecht in 1942-47. He completed his Ph.D. in differential geometry from the University of Leiden in 1946 under the supervision of Willem van der Woude.[1] In 1947 he came to the United States at the invitation of Oscar Veblen, where he stayed at the Institute for Advanced Study for one year as Veblen's assistant, and the second year as member of the IAS, meeting Shiing-Shen Chern, and he also went to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. In February to June 1954, he went for a second time to Ann Arbor where he met Raoul Bott and his student Stephen Smale. In 1950 he was appointed professor of mathematics (and statistics) at the Agricultural University of Wageningen.

In 1957, he was notably one of the six participants to the first Arbeitstagung, an informal seminar animated by Friedrich Hirzebruch, which later became very popular among mathematicians; he saw at this occasion Alexander Grothendieck presenting his first revolutionary works in algebraic geometry.[2] In 1960 he visited Northwestern University in Evanston for half a year.

He became professor of pure mathematics at the University of Amsterdam in 1962. In 1969-70 he made a second visit at the Institute for Advanced Study. At his return from Princeton, he gave a talk at the International Congress of Mathematicians organised in Nice,[3] during which he was appointed in the executive committee of the International Mathematical Union for 1971–1975.[4] He finally served as director of the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques from 1971 until his retirement in 1985, then stayed there as a long-term visitor for six years.[5] In 1990, he was appointed chairman of the program committee of the International Congress of Mathematicians held at Kyoto.[6] In 1991, he returned to the Netherlands to live in Heteren, and continued to participate in mathematical colloquia at the University of Utrecht.[7]

  1. ^ "Nicolaas Kuiper - The Mathematics Genealogy Project". www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu.
  2. ^ Zagier, Don, "Life and Work of Friedrich Hirzebruch" (PDF), in Jahresbericht der Deutschen Mathematiker-Vereinigung, (2015) 117: 93–132 (p. 106).
  3. ^ Kuiper, Nicolaas (1971). "The differential topology of separable Banach manifolds". Actes du Congrès international des mathématiciens, 1–10 Septembre 1970, Nice. Vol. Tome 2. pp. 85–90.
  4. ^ Actes du Congrès International des Mathématiciens, 1970 (PDF), publiés sous la direction du Comité d'Organisation du Congrès, Paris, 1971, pp. xiv, xxiv.
  5. ^ Jackson, Allyn (1999). "The IHÉS at Forty" (PDF). Notices of the American Mathematical Society. 46 (3). American Mathematical Society: 329–337.
  6. ^ Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians August 21-29,1990 Kyoto, Japan, Volume I, (PDF), The Mathematical Society of Japan, Springer-Verlag, 1990, p. xiii.
  7. ^ Banchoff, Thomas F. (1997). "Remembering Nicolaas Kuiper [1920–1994]" (PDF). In Cecil, Thomas E.; Chern, Shiing-shen (eds.). Tight and Taut Submanifolds. Mathematical Sciences Research Institute Publications. Vol. 32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. xiii–xv. ISBN 0-521-62047-3. MR 1486868.