Robert S. Doran | |
---|---|
Born | Winthrop, Iowa | December 21, 1937
Alma mater | University of Iowa University of Washington |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Operator Algebras Functional Analysis |
Institutions | Texas Christian University Massachusetts Institute of Technology University of Oxford Institute for Advanced Study |
Doctoral advisors | J. M. G. Fell Ramesh Gangolli |
Robert Stuart Doran (born December 21, 1937) is an American mathematician. He held the John William and Helen Stubbs Potter Professorship in mathematics at Texas Christian University (TCU) from 1995 until his retirement in 2016. Doran served as chair of the TCU mathematics department for 21 years. [1] He has also held visiting appointments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Oxford, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.. He was elected to the board of trustees of the Association of Members of the Institute for Advanced Study, serving as president of the organization for 10 years. [2] [3] He has been an editor for the Encyclopedia of Mathematics and its Applications, Cambridge University Press, a position he has held since 1988. [4] Doran is known for his research-level books, his award-winning teaching, and for his solution to a long-standing open problem due to Irving Kaplansky on a symmetric *-algebra. [5]
Robert Stuart Doran was born on December 21, 1937, in Winthrop, Iowa. [6] In 1959, he married Shirley Ann Lange. They have two sons, Bruce and Brad.
In 1956, Doran served in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He served as a Special Forces Instructor at the US Army Jungle Survival Center at Fort Sherman, Colón, Panama. [7] He left active duty in the military in 1958 and he served in the US Army reserves until 1962 when he was honorably discharged.
Doran, a member of Phi Beta Kappa, studied mathematics at the University of Iowa from 1959 until 1964, earning a Bachelor's degree and a Master of Science degree. He received a Ph.D in mathematics from the University of Washington in 1968, under the direction of J. M. G. Fell and Ramesh Gangolli. [8] His doctoral dissertation, [9] [10] titled Representations of C*-algebras by Uniform CT-bundles and Operator Theory, dealt with topological representations in spaces of cross-sections of fiber bundles of a non-commutative C*-algebra. This work was motivated in part by the classical Gelfand–Naimark theorem for C*-algebras and by the work of M. Takesaki and J. Tomiyama. [11] [12]
Doran held the John William and Helen Stubbs Potter Professor of Mathematics at Texas Christian University from 1995 to 2016. He was faculty sponsor of the TCU chapter of Campus Crusade for Christ (Cru) for 43 years, and he was the founding faculty sponsor in 1989 of the TCU chapter of Brothers Under Christ (Beta Upsilon Chi).
He has held visiting appointments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1980), Oxford University in England (1988), and the Institute for Advanced Study (1981). [13] His areas of research involve representation theory, C*-algebra characterizations, the notion of an approximate identity in a Banach algebra, and Banach bundle theory. [14] [15]
Doran taught at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. In 1988 he published an article titled "A care package for undergraduate mathematics students" that outlined his teaching methods. [16] He has received national, statewide, and local awards for his teaching. [17] [18]
Doran was chair of the TCU Mathematics Department for 21 years (1990–2011). In 1986 he was elected to the board of trustees the Association of Members of the Institute for Advanced Study. [13] He was president of the association for 10 years (1990-1999). Doran has been an editor for Cambridge University Press since 1988. [19] He has also organized many American Mathematical Society special sessions and conferences for CBMS, the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences. His first such conference was held at TCU in 1970 with Paul Halmos as principal speaker. [20] The most recent conference was held at TCU, June 2011 with Phillip Griffiths, former Director of the Institute for Advanced Study as principal speaker.
Doran is known for his elegant solution [21] of a long-standing unsolved problem on a symmetric *-algebra left open by Irving Kaplansky in the Duke Mathematical Journal in 1949. [22]
Doran has published books, articles, and reviews on a variety of topics, often collaborating with other mathematicians, including J. M. G. Fell, Richard Kadison, Calvin Moore, Jonathan Rosenberg, Paul Sally, Robert Zimmer, and V. S. Varadarajan.
In addition to research articles and books, Doran has published over 550 reviews for the Mathematical Reviews. [24]
Jean-Pierre Serre is a French mathematician who has made contributions to algebraic topology, algebraic geometry and algebraic number theory. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1954, the Wolf Prize in 2000 and the inaugural Abel Prize in 2003.
In functional analysis, a discipline within mathematics, given a C*-algebra A, the Gelfand–Naimark–Segal construction establishes a correspondence between cyclic *-representations of A and certain linear functionals on A. The correspondence is shown by an explicit construction of the *-representation from the state. It is named for Israel Gelfand, Mark Naimark, and Irving Segal.
Israel Moiseevich Gelfand, also written Israïl Moyseyovich Gel'fand, or Izrail M. Gelfand was a prominent Soviet-American mathematician. He made significant contributions to many branches of mathematics, including group theory, representation theory and functional analysis. The recipient of many awards, including the Order of Lenin and the first Wolf Prize, he was a Foreign Fellow of the Royal Society and professor at Moscow State University and, after immigrating to the United States shortly before his 76th birthday, at Rutgers University. Gelfand is also a 1994 MacArthur Fellow.
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Ernest Borisovich Vinberg was a Soviet and Russian mathematician, who worked on Lie groups and algebraic groups, discrete subgroups of Lie groups, invariant theory, and representation theory. He introduced Vinberg's algorithm and the Koecher–Vinberg theorem.
Gilles I. Pisier is a professor of mathematics at the Pierre and Marie Curie University and a distinguished professor and A.G. and M.E. Owen Chair of Mathematics at the Texas A&M University. He is known for his contributions to several fields of mathematics, including functional analysis, probability theory, harmonic analysis, and operator theory. He has also made fundamental contributions to the theory of C*-algebras. Gilles is the younger brother of French actress Marie-France Pisier.
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