p ro fessor shiing-shen chern m s r i ’s founding dire c t o r

Shiing-Shen Chern, a towering figure in mathematics, can look back on a career that has spanned continents and cultures. Teacher, researcher, and founder of three mathematical research institutes—the renowned geometer has helped forge links with scientists around the globe while advancing knowledge in differentialgeo-metry, his own important field of study.

Professor Chern was born in China in 1911 and educated in his homeland,Germany and France. He launched hisAmerican mathematical career in the 1940s with an extraordinary passage.

In 1943, while teaching at Tsing HuaUniversity in Kunming in southwestern China,Chern received an invitation from the Institutefor Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, NewJersey. Chern’s early work on isotropic s u r f a c e shad caught the attention of researchers at IAS,including Hermann Weyl, who championedChern both within and beyond the Institute.

But getting to New Jersey amidst the turmoilof two wars—World War II and the Sino-Japanese conflict—was no simple task. Chernleft Kunming and headed west, taking a remark-a b l e series of flights on a wide array of militaryaircraft. “We flew on military flights toBombay and Calcutta,” Chern recalls asthough it had happened yesterday, “then to

Africa, then Brazil, from South America toCentral America, and finally to Miami, where Iboarded the train to Princeton. We would stopat a military base, they would feed me and Icould shower and sleep, and then I would simplywait for the next available seat on a plane thatwas going in the same direction I was.”

The drama of the journey was followed by aninvigorating and remarkably productive twoyears at IAS—a time he refers to as “unforget-table.” The peaceful, intellectual atmosphere atPrinceton was a salve for the trials he enduredin war-torn China.

While at IAS, Chern developed his pivotalwork on the Gauss-Bonnet formula. AndréWeil and Allendoerfer had just published theirpaper on Gauss-Bonnet; Weil and Chern struckup a lasting friendship which is both scientificand personal. As Chern wrote in 1992 : “I stillconsider this my best piece of work.”

shiing-shen chernm s r i ’s founding dire c t o r

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The wartime circumnavigation was notChern’s first adventure in travel. As a child hetraveled through China, as his father,a judge, carried out his legal duties across thenation. Though the young Chern necessarilymoved frequently, his intelligence and curiosity—apparent quite early—made the continualdislocation anything but a problem. In fact, he recalls skipping grades wherever he went.“Even then,” Chern says of those early years, “I found math so easy, though at the time, Idid not know it was such a great subject.”

Most mathematics books were written inEnglish, a fact that started Chern on the roadto becoming the polyglot he is today.

Following middle school, Chern enteredNankai University and promptly skipped twoyears. His mentor at Nankai, Professor Li-FuChiang, received his Ph.D. from Harvard underJulian Coolidge—a connection that led C h e r ninto intensive studies in geometry during hissenior year. While performing graduate workat Tsing Hua University in Beijing, Chern drewinspiration from Wilhelm Blaschke’s books ondifferential geometry. Blaschke’s visit toBeijing in 1932 convinced Chern more thanever of his prime area of interest, and afterreceiving his master’s degree in 1934 he traveled

to Hamburg on a fellowship and continued hislink with Blaschke.

He received his doctor of science degree fromHamburg in 1936 and then went to Paris tostudy with the eminent geometer, Elie Cartan.As Chern said in the volume honoring him, published in 1992:

“Cartan was a wonderful teacher. He suggest-ed ‘little problems,’ some of which became thesubjects of my papers. Probably because ofmy responses to his questions he allowed meto visit him at his home, about once every twoweeks... It was an interesting and unforget-table year.”

In 1937, Chern returned from his Europeanstudies to a China torn by war. He became aprofessor as planned, but Tsing Hua Universitywas forced to join with two other universitiesin a move to the safer, more isolated city ofKunming in southwestern China.

The isolation of the region, and the scarcity of books beyond his small personal library, ledChern to write to Cartan, who generously senthim numerous reprints of his earlier works.Chern immersed himself in the work of Cartan—a perfect prelude to the adventure that tookhim to Princeton and those two significantyears of study.

In 1945, following his wartime sojourn at IAS,Chern returned to Beijing when his mother fell ill. He was soon thereafter appointed toorganize the Institute of Mathematics at theAcademia Sinica, the Chinese NationalAcademy. Chern worked to attract the bestmathematical talent from across China, andcreated programs where scholars could teach

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“I found math so easy, though at the timeI did not know it was such a great subject.”

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and conduct research in a focused and sup-portive environment. Chern could not know itthen, but that early effort represented merelythe first of three institutes he would help createduring his stellar career.

Political instability once again changedthe course of Chern’s career and his life,as well as that of his family. As the Nankingg o v e r n m e n t collapsed, his friends at Princetonmade it possible for him to leave China andmake the United States his home.

“There was never any commitment from theInstitute to hire me. I later realized that whathad happened was really a rescue mission,that the idea was to save me, to get me out ofChina as the government fell.”

“So here I was suddenly in America, with myfamily, and I needed a job,” he remembers.“Fortunately, because of my earlier time atPrinceton, I knew many people in the fieldand did not need any introductions.”

Numerous invitations to join academic depart-ments came his way, yet Chern remembersclearly why he chose to accept a position atthe University of Chicago in 1949. “I selectedChicago,” he says, “because it had become oneof the major mathematics centers in thiscountry.”

“Chicago was a very desirable place tostudy and teach,” Chern says, adding thatthe university was unique in another way thatappealed to him. “All the universities inAmerica have many purposes in higher educa-tion, but at the University of Chicago themain purpose was to advance knowledge.”

“I later realized that what had happened was really arescue mission, that the idea was to save me, to getme out of China as the government fell.”

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Chern’s parallel courses of teaching andresearch were perfectly matched at Chicago.He pursued his research in algebraic topologyand geometry, maintained a close associationwith colleague André Weil, and taught classesthat sometimes contained “a brilliant galaxyof students.” His work with those studentsproduced 10 PhDs, most of whom pursuedcareers in mathematical research and teaching.

Eleven Chicago winters passed before Chernaccepted an invitation to join the ascendingmathematics department at the University ofCalifornia Berkeley. But this was only one of a constellation of reasons for his move west.Even the cool, gray fog that sometimesenvelops his home near the Berkeley campuscould not approach the harshness of theMidwestern winters.

Says Chern of his decision to leave Chicago:“Berkeley’s math chairman at the time, G.C.Evans, had always been very nice to me andhad tried to recruit me several times, butevery time I hesitated. For a long time, theEast Coast had been the center of mathematics,and it was logical to be in the East. But with

the ease of air travel and the expansion andrising status of Berkeley, I decided to makethe move.”

He took a sabbatical between positions tospend a year in France and Switzerland, apersonal and professional return to the placeswhere he had done his seminal work underElie Cartan.

For Chern, Berkeley was as productiveand stimulating an environment asChicago had been, even with Berkeley’s muchlarger campus and population. He was flat-tered by talk of being named as successor toEvans, but declined the chairmanship to focuson his work and the projects of his students.From 1960 until his official retirement in1979, Chern oversaw the work and theses of31 PhD students.

“I am happy to say,” Chern says with satisfactionand a burgeoning smile, “that I have alwayshad, and in fact I still have, very good rela-t i o n s h i p s with my students.”

That smile broadens when Chern reveals oneof the more unusual rewards of his years ofteaching. “One of my students won theCalifornia lottery, ” he says. “I think it was $22million, and he donated $1 million to estab-lish the Shiing-Shen Chern VisitingProfessorship at Berkeley.”

Professor Chern possesses a remarkable graceand ease, and an understated civility that hasimpressed colleagues and students alike. But,in addition to his poise and calm he hasalways had a clear focus on the importanceof research to the future of mathematics,and a powerful drive to actualize that vision.

“Berkeley’s math chairman... had tried to recruit meseveral times... but with the expansion and risingstatus of Berkeley, I decided to make the move.”

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That strength and clarity of vision surfacedduring his first years of teaching in China,when Chern taught and studied in a region isolated by war. Later, after his exposure tothe benefits of the research institute that heobserved in Princeton, he helped build up themathematics institute of Academica Sinica inNanking, serving as Acting Director (1946-1948). He returned to China in the 1980s asthe founder of the Nankai Institute.

In 1978, just as Chern was about to retirefrom the Berkeley faculty, he and two fellowmathematics professors decided to propose a new mathematics research institute in anationwide competition sponsored by theNational Science Foundation. “We started having discussions in the late 1970s, beforethe competition, but once it began, our discus-sions became more serious.”

“When the NSF invited us to submit a proposal,I was pleased to work on it with Calvin Mooreand I. M. Singer. Most of the work, the writ-ing, was done by Cal Moore,” Chern recallswith appreciation. “He was very young, andvery energetic.”

Chern, Singer (now at M.I.T.), and Moore (now chairman of the UC BerkeleyMathematics Department) succeeded in winningNSF approval for the program: a new,research-oriented, nonprofit, independentinstitute to be established in the hills overlooking the Berkeley campus: theMathematical Sciences Research Institute,MSRI.

“It took such a long time before the Institutebecame a reality,” Chern says of those forma-tive days for MSRI. “The NSF had long beenwanting to establish an institute, and I believemany academic institutions had hopes ofbeing the home to the new institute.”

Chern was able to draw from his lifetime ofexperience, not only as a teacher and accom-plished researcher, but as a visionary whounderstood the importance of mathematicalresearch for the future of the sciences andtheir applications. He recognized that beyondthe fundamental need to train mathematiciansas future teachers, at the highest levels, therewas a need to create a place, an ideal environ-ment, for high level mathematical research.

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Fortunately, many individuals and institutions andcorporations have understood the importance of MSRIand have supported it.

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The strength of the MathematicalSciences Research Institute, says Chern,is that from the beginning the Institutenot only had the support of UC Berkeley,but also had a very strong relationshipwith other institutions, including Stanford, other University of California campuses, anduniversities throughout the West. Since then, the Academic Sponsors group has grown to include 80 of the strongest mathematicsdepartments in the United States and in severalother countries. “From the beginningwe werea kind of confederation,” he says.

Shiing-Shen Chern was awarded the UnitedStates’ National Medal of Science in 1975, theWolf Prize, in Israel, in 1983/84, and theShaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences in HongKong in 2004.

Chern was also founding director of theNankai Institute of Mathematics in Tianjin,China, established in 1985.

His collected works are published by Springer-Verlag.

Professor Chern is also a member of:

Academia Nazionale dei LinceiAcademie PeloritanaAcademica SinicaAcademie des Sciences à ParisAmerican Academy of Arts and SciencesAmerican Philosophical SocietyBrazilian AcademyChinese Academy of SciencesNational Academy of SciencesNew York Academy of SciencesRoyal Society of LondonRussian AcademyThird World Academy of Sciences

He has received honorary degrees from:

University of ChicagoUniversity of Notre DameState University of New York at Stony BrookChinese University of Hong KongUniversity of HamburgEidgenössische Technische Hochschule, Zürich

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Photo captions:

Cover (from left)

With his grandmother, age three.With his family (Chern at top right), age 17.With his father, age five.At home, August, 2000.

Numbered Photographs

1. At home, August, 2000.2. Upon graduation from Nankai University, 1930.3. In his room while pursuing studies in Hamburg,

1935.4. With his wife, Shih-Ning.5. 1985.

6. Lecturing in China, 1987.7. Upon receiving the Wolf Foundation Prize in 1984.8. At the threshold of MSRI, 1985.9. At home, 1990.10. Chern with U.S. President Gerald Ford, October, 1975.11. With President of China Jiang Zemin, 1999.

12. 1988.13. Accepting citation for the establishment of the

Nankai Institute from the mayor of Tianjin.14. 1982.