Ivan Smith (mathematician)

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Ivan Smith
Born1973 (age 5152)
Alma mater University of Oxford
Awards Whitehead Prize (2007)
Adams Prize (2013)
Scientific career
Fields Symplectic topology
Institutions University of Cambridge
Thesis Symplectic Geometry of Lefschetz Fibrations  (1999)
Doctoral advisor Simon Kirwan Donaldson

Ivan Smith (born 1973) FRS is a British mathematician who deals with symplectic manifolds and their interaction with algebraic geometry, low-dimensional topology, and dynamics. He is a professor at the University of Cambridge.

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Education and career

Smith was born in 1973 as the second child of Neil Smith, a professor of linguistics at University College London, and Saras Smith. He studied at the University of Oxford, where he received his doctorate in 1999 under the supervision of Simon Donaldson with thesis Symplectic Geometry of Lefschetz Fibrations. [1] Smith is now a professor in Cambridge at Gonville & Caius College.

Among other things, Smith derived nodal invariants from symplectic geometry.

He received in 2007 the Whitehead Prize for his work in symplectic topology (highlighting the breadth of applied techniques from algebraic geometry and topology) [2] and in 2013 the Adams Prize. In 2018 he was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Rio de Janeiro.

Smith was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2023. [3]

Selected publications

References

  1. Ivan Smith at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  2. Whitehead Prize to Smith 2007
  3. "Ivan Smith". royalsociety.org. Retrieved 25 May 2023.