Sylvain Edward Cappell (born 1946), a Belgian American mathematician and former student of William Browder at Princeton University, is a topologist who has spent most of his career at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU, where he is now the Silver Professor of Mathematics.
Sylvain Cappell | |
|---|---|
 Sylvain Cappell (right) | |
| Born | 1946 (age 77–78) Brussels, Belgium |
| Nationality | Belgian, American |
| Alma mater | Princeton University Columbia University |
| Awards | AMS Distinguished Public Service Award (2018) Guggenheim Fellowship (1989–90) Sloan Fellowship (1971–72) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | New York University |
| Doctoral advisor | William Browder |
| Doctoral students | Shmuel Weinberger |
He was born in Brussels, Belgium and immigrated with his parents to New York City in 1950 and grew up largely in this city.[1] In 1963, as a senior at the Bronx High School of Science, he won first place in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search for his work on "The Theory of Semi-cyclical Groups with Special Reference to Non-Aristotelian Logic." He then graduated from Columbia University in 1966, winning the Van Amringe Mathematical Prize.[2] He is best known for his "codimension one splitting theorem",[3] which is a standard tool in high-dimensional geometric topology, and a number of important results proven with his collaborator Julius Shaneson (now at the University of Pennsylvania). Their work includes many results in knot theory (and broad generalizations of that subject)[4] and aspects of low-dimensional topology. They gave the first nontrivial examples of topological conjugacy of linear transformations,[5] which led to a flowering of research on the topological study of spaces with singularities.[6]
More recently, they combined their understanding of singularities, first to lattice point counting in polytopes, then to Euler-Maclaurin type summation formulae,[7] and most recently to counting lattice points in the circle.[8] This last problem is a classical one, initiated by Gauss, and the paper is still being vetted by experts.[citation needed]
In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.[9] Cappell was elected and served as a vice president of the AMS for the term of February 2010 through January 2013.[10][11] In 2018 he was elected to be a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[12]
References
edit- ^ "Responses to NYC DOE questionnaire". nychold.org. Archived from the original on 2004-07-18.
- ^ "CCT Donors 2009–10 | Columbia College Today". www.college.columbia.edu. Retrieved 2022-06-04.
- ^ Cappell, Sylvain (1975), "A splitting theorem for manifolds", Inventiones Mathematicae, 33 (2): 69–170, Bibcode:1976InMat..33...69C, doi:10.1007/bf01402340, S2CID 121348951.
- ^ Cappell, Sylvain; Shaneson, Julius (1974), "The codimension two placement problem and homology equivalent manifolds", Annals of Mathematics, 99 (2): 277–348, doi:10.2307/1970901, JSTOR 1970901.
- ^ Cappell, Sylvain & Shaneson, Julius (1981), "Non-linear Similarity", Annals of Mathematics, 113 (2): 315–355, doi:10.2307/2006986, JSTOR 2006986.
- ^ Weinberger, Shmuel (1994), The Topological Classification of Stratified Spaces, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0-226-88566-6.
- ^ Shaneson, Julius (1995), "Characteristic classes, lattice points, and Euler-MacLaurin formulae", Proc. International Congress of Mathematicians, vol 1 (Zurich 1994), Basel, Berlin: Birkhäuser, pp. 612–624.
- ^ Cappell, Sylvain & Shaneson, Julius (2007). "Some problems in number theory I: The Circle Problem". arXiv:math/0702613..
- ^ List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society, retrieved 2012-11-10.
- ^ "2009 Election Results" (PDF). American Mathematical Society. Retrieved 2017-09-09.
- ^ "AMS Officers". American Mathematical Society. Archived from the original on 2013-01-25.
- ^ "Member Directory | American Academy of Arts and Sciences".