Heisuke Hironaka

Heisuke Hironaka (広中 平祐 Hironaka Heisuke; April 9, 1931?) is a Japanese mathematician. He was a student of Oscar Zariski along with David Mumford, Michael Artin, and other prominent mathematicians.

Related Topics:
April 9 - 1931 - Japan - Mathematician - Oscar Zariski - David Mumford - Michael Artin

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He is celebrated for proving in 1964 that singularities of algebraic varieties admit resolutions in characteristic zero. This means that any projective variety can be replaced by a similar one (i.e. birationally equivalent) which has no singularities. For this theorem he won the Fields Medal in 1970. He was the second Japanese mathematician who won this prize; the first was Kunihiko Kodaira in the 1950s. Shigefumi Mori became the third Japanese Fields medalist in 1990. All three studyied algebraic geometry.

Related Topics:
1964 - Singularities of algebraic varieties - Resolutions - Projective variety - Birationally equivalent - Fields Medal - 1970 - Kunihiko Kodaira - Shigefumi Mori - Japan - 1990 - Algebraic geometry

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Hironaka was for many years a professor of mathematics at Harvard but currently lives in Japan, where he is greatly respected and influential. He has been active in raising funds for causes such as mathematical education.

Related Topics:
Harvard - Japan

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Trivia: He once wrote a paper under a pseudonym dervied from Kobayashi Issa, a famous Japanese haiku poet. The result is known as Issa's theorem in complex function theory.

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