Robion Kirby

Robion Kirby
Kirby in 2009
Born	(1938-02-25) February 25, 1938 (age 86) Chicago, Illinois, US
Alma mater	University of Chicago
Known for	Kirby–Siebenmann class Kirby calculus
Awards	Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry (1971) NAS Award for Scientific Reviewing (1995)
Scientific career
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	University of California, Berkeley
Thesis	Smoothing Locally Flat Imbeddings (1965)
Doctoral advisor	Eldon Dyer [de]
Doctoral students	Selman Akbulut Stephen Bigelow Tim Cochran David Gauld Robert Gompf Elisenda Grigsby Tomasz Mrowka Yongbin Ruan Martin Scharlemann Rob Schneiderman (mathematician) Michael Handel

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]