Shiing-Shen Chern

Shiing-Shen Chern (/tʃɜːrn/; Chinese: 陳 省 身 ,

Mandarin: [tʂʰə́n.ɕǐŋ.ʂən]; October 28, 1911 –
Shiing-Shen Chern
December 3, 2004) was a Chinese American 陳省身
mathematician and poet. He made fundamental
contributions to differential geometry and topology. He
has been called the "father of modern differential
geometry" and is widely regarded as a leader in
geometry and one of the greatest mathematicians of the
twentieth century, winning numerous awards and
recognition including the Wolf Prize and the inaugural
Shaw Prize.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] In memory of Shiing-
Shen Chern, the International Mathematical Union
established the Chern Medal in 2010 to recognize "an
individual whose accomplishments warrant the highest
level of recognition for outstanding achievements in Shiing-Shen Chern in 1976
the field of mathematics."[8] Born October 28, 1911
Jiaxing, Zhejiang, Chinese
Chern worked at the Institute for Advanced Study
Empire
(1943–45), spent about a decade at the University of
Died December 3, 2004
Chicago (1949-1960), and then moved to University of
(aged 93)
California, Berkeley, where he cofounded the
Tianjin, China
Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in 1982 and
was the institute's founding director.[9][10] Renowned Nationality Chinese and American
coauthors with Chern include Jim Simons, an Citizenship China and United States
American mathematician and billionaire hedge fund Alma mater Nankai University
manager.[11] Chern's work, most notably the Chern- University of Hamburg
Gauss-Bonnet Theorem, Chern–Simons theory, and
Known for Chern class
Chern classes, are still highly influential in current
Chern–Gauss–Bonnet
research in mathematics, including geometry, topology,
theorem
and knot theory, as well as many branches of physics,
Chern–Simons theory
including string theory, condensed matter physics,
Chern–Simons form
general relativity, and quantum field theory.[12]
Chern–Weil theory
Chern–Weil
homomorphism
Name spelling Chern's conjecture
Chern's conjecture
(differential geometry)
Chern–Bott formula
Chern–Lashof theory
Children 2
Chern's surname ( 陳 / 陈 , pinyin: Chén) is a common Awards Chauvenet Prize (1970)
Chinese surname which is now usually romanized as National Medal of Science
Chen. The spelling "Chern" is from the Gwoyeu (1975)
Romatzyh (GR) romanization system. In English,
Wolf Prize (1983)
Chern pronounced his own name as "Churn" (/tʃɜːrn/).
Lobachevsky Medal
(2002)

Biography Shaw Prize (2004)

ForMemRS (1985) [1]
Scientific career
Early years in China Fields Mathematics
Chern was born in Xiushui, Jiaxing, China in 1911. He Institutions Tsinghua University
graduated from Xiushui Middle School ( 秀 水 中 學 ) Institute for Advanced
and subsequently moved to Tianjin in 1922 to Study
accompany his father. In 1926, after spending four University of Chicago
years in Tianjin, Chern graduated from Fulun High University of California,
School.[13] Berkeley
Mathematical Sciences
At age 15, Chern entered the Faculty of Sciences of the Research Institute
Nankai University in Tianjin and was interested in Nankai University
physics, but not so much the laboratory, so he studied
Thesis Eine Invariantentheorie
mathematics instead.[5][14] Chern graduated with a
der Dreigewebe aus r-
Bachelor of Science degree in 1930.[14] At Nankai,
dimensionalen
Chern's mentor was mathematician Jiang Lifu, and
Mannigfaltigkeiten im
Chern was also heavily influenced by Chinese
(https://link.springer.com/c
physicist Rao Yutai, considered to be one of the
ontent/pdf/10.1007%2FBF
founding fathers of modern Chinese informatics.
02940731.pdf)
Chern went to Beijing to work at the Tsinghua Doctoral advisor Wilhelm Blaschke
University Department of Mathematics as a teaching Doctoral students Louis Auslander
assistant. At the same time he also registered at Thomas Banchoff
Tsinghua Graduate School as a student. He studied Manfredo do Carmo
projective differential geometry under Sun Guangyuan, Robert B. Gardner
a University of Chicago-trained geometer and logician Howard Garland
who was also from Zhejiang. Sun is another mentor of Harold Levine
Chern who is considered a founder of modern Chinese Katsumi Nomizu
mathematics. In 1932, Chern published his first William F. Pohl
research article in the Tsinghua University Journal. In Alexandre Augusto
the summer of 1934, Chern graduated from Tsinghua Martins Rodrigues
with a master's degree, the first ever master's degree in Bernard Shiffman
mathematics issued in China.[13] Liao Shantao
Sidney M. Webster
Yang Chen-Ning's father, Yang Ko-Chuen, another Alan Weinstein
Chicago-trained professor at Tsinghua, but specializing Joseph Wolf
in algebra, also taught Chern. At the same time, Chern Shing-Tung Yau
was Chen-Ning Yang's teacher of undergraduate maths Shiu-Yuen Cheng
at Tsinghua. At Tsinghua, Hua Luogeng, also a Peter Wai-Kwong Li
mathematician, was Chern's colleague and roommate. Other notable James Simons
students Chen Ning Yang
In 1932, Wilhelm Blaschke from the University of
Hamburg visited Tsinghua and was impressed by Chinese name
Chern and his research.[15] Traditional Chinese 陳省身
Simplified Chinese 陈省身
1934–1937 in Europe Transcriptions
In 1934, Chern received a scholarship to study in the Standard Mandarin
United States at Princeton and Harvard, but at the time Hanyu Pinyin Chén Xǐngshēn
he wanted to study geometry and Europe was the Bopomofo ㄔㄣˊ ㄒㄧㄥˇ ㄕㄣ
center for the maths and sciences.[5]
Gwoyeu Romatzyh Chern Shiing-Shen

He studied with the well-known Austrian geometer Wade–Giles Ch'en Hsing-shen

Wilhelm Blaschke.[14] Co-funded by Tsinghua and the
Chinese Foundation of Culture and Education, Chern went to continue his study in mathematics in
Germany with a scholarship.[14]

Chern studied at the University of Hamburg and worked under Blaschke's guidance first on the geometry
of webs then on the Cartan-Kähler theory and invariant theory. He would often eat lunch and chat in
German with fellow colleague Erich Kähler.[5]

He had a three-year scholarship but finished his degree very quickly in two years.[5] He obtained his Dr.
rer.nat. (Doctor of Science, which is equivalent to PhD) degree in February, 1936.[14] He wrote his thesis
in German, and it was titled Eine Invariantentheorie der Dreigewebe aus -dimensionalen
Mannigfaltigkeiten im (English: An invariant theory of 3-webs of -dimensional manifolds in
). [16]

For his third year, Blaschke recommended Chern to study at the University of Paris.[5]

It was at this time that he had to choose between the career of algebra in Germany under Emil Artin and
the career of geometry in France under Élie-Joseph Cartan. Chern was tempted by what he called the
"organizational beauty" of Artin's algebra, but in the end, he decided to go to France in September
1936.[17]

He spent one year at the Sorbonne in Paris. There he met Cartan once a fortnight. Chern said:[5]

Usually the day after [meeting with Cartan] I would get a letter from him. He would say,
“After you left, I thought more about your questions...”—he had some results, and some
more questions, and so on. He knew all these papers on simple Lie groups, Lie algebras, all
by heart. When you saw him on the street, when a certain issue would come up, he would
pull out some old envelope and write something and give you the answer. And sometimes it
took me hours or even days to get the same answer... I had to work very hard.
In August 1936, Chern watched the Summer Olympics in Berlin together with Chinese mathematician
Hua Luogeng who paid Chern a brief visit. During that time, Hua was studying at the University of
Cambridge in Britain.

1937-1943 WW2
In the summer of 1937, Chern accepted the invitation of Tsinghua University and returned to China.[17]
He was promoted to professor of mathematics at Tsinghua.

In late 1937, however, the start of World War 2 forced Tsinghua and other academic institutions to move
away from Beijing to west China.[18] Three universities including Peking University, Tsinghua, and
Nankai formed the temporary National Southwestern Associated University (NSAU), and relocated to
Kunming, Yunnan province. Chern never reached Beijing.

In 1939, Chern married Shih-Ning Cheng, and the couple had two children, Paul and May.[18]

The war prevented Chern from having regular contacts with the outside mathematical community. He
wrote to Cartan about his situation, to which Cartan sent him a box of his reprints. Chern spent a
considerable amount of time pondering over Cartan's papers and published despite relative isolation. In
1943, his papers gained international recognition, and Oswald Veblen invited him to the IAS. Because of
the war, it took him a week to reach Princeton via US military aircraft.[5]

1943-1945 visit to the IAS, the Chern theorem

In July 1943, Chern went to the United States, and worked at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in
Princeton on characteristic classes in differential geometry. There he worked with André Weil on the
Chern–Weil homomorphism and theory of characteristic classes, later to be foundational to the Atiyah–
Singer index theorem. Shortly afterwards, he was invited by Solomon Lefschetz to be an editor of Annals
of Mathematics.[18]

Between 1943-1964 he was invited back to the IAS on several occasions.[12] On Chern, Weil wrote:[19]

... we seemed to share a common attitude towards such subjects, or towards mathematics in
general; we were both striving to strike at the root of each question while freeing our minds
from preconceived notions about what others might have regarded as the right or the wrong
way of dealing with it.

It was at the IAS that his work culminated in his publication of the generalization of the famous Gauss–
Bonnet theorem to higher dimensional manifolds, now known today as the Chern theorem. It is widely
considered to be his magnum opus.[12][5][2] This period at the IAS was a turning point in career, having a
major impact on mathematics, while fundamentally altering the course of differential geometry and
algebraic geometry.[3][12] In a letter to the then director Frank Aydelotte, Chern wrote:[12]
 “The years 1943–45 will undoubtedly be decisive in my career, and I have profited not only
in the mathematical side. I am inclined to think that among the people who have stayed at the
Institute, I was one who has profited the most, but the other people may think the same way.”

1945-48 first return to China

Chern returned to Shanghai in 1945 to help found the Institute of Mathematics of the Academia
Sinica.[18] Chern was the acting president of the institute. Wu Wenjun was Chern's graduate student at the
institute.

In 1948, Chern was elected one of the first academicians of the Academia Sinica. He was the youngest
academician elected (at age 37).

In 1948, he accepted an invitation by Weyl and Veblen to return to Princeton as a professor.[2][18]

1948-60 Back in the USA, University of Chicago

By the end of 1948, Chern returned to the United States and IAS.[18] He brought his family with him.[2]
In 1949, he was invited by Weil to become professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago and
accepted the position as chair of geometry.[18][2] Coincidentally, Ernest Preston Lane, former Chair at
UChicago Department of Mathematics, was the doctoral advisor of Chern's undergraduate mentor at
Tsinghua—Sun Guangyuan.

In 1950 he was invited by the International Congress of Mathematicians in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

He delivered his address on the Differential Geometry of Fiber Bundles. According to Hans Samelson, in
the lecture Chern introduced the notion of a connection on a principal fiber bundle, a generalization of the
Levi-Civita connection.[2]

Berkeley and MSRI

In 1960 Chern moved to the University of California, Berkeley.[18] He worked and stayed there until he
became an emeritus professor in 1979.[20] In 1961, Chern became a naturalized citizen of the United
States.[2] In the same year, he was elected member of the United States National Academy of
Sciences.[21]

My election to the US National Academy of Sciences was a prime factor for my US

citizenship. In 1960 I was tipped about the possibility of an academy membership. Realizing
that a citizenship was necessary, I applied for it. The process was slowed because of my
association to Oppenheimer. As a consequence I became a US citizen about a month before
my election to academy membership.

In 1964, Chern was a vice president of American Mathematical Society (AMS).

Chern retired from UC Berkeley in 1979.[22][23] In 1981, together with colleagues Calvin C. Moore and
Isadore Singer, he founded the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) at Berkeley, serving as
the director until 1984. Afterward he became the honorary director of the institute. MSRI now is one of
the largest and most prominent mathematical institutes in the world.[21] Shing-Tung Yau was one of his
PhD students during this period, and he later won the Fields Medal in 1982.

During WW2, the US did not have much of a scene in geometry (which is why he chose to study in
Germany). Chern was largely responsible in making the US a leading research hub in the field, but he
remained modest about his achievements, preferring to say that he is a man of 'small problems' rather
than 'big views.'[5]

Visits to China and bridging East and West

The Shanghai Communiqué was issued by the United States and the People's Republic of China on
February 27, 1972. The relationship between these two nations started to normalize, and American
citizens were allowed to visit China. In September 1972, Chern visited Beijing with his wife. During this
period of time, Chern visited China 25 times, of which 14 were to his home province Zhejiang.

He was admired and respected by Chinese leaders Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Zemin.
Because of foreign prestigious scientific support, Chern was able to revive mathematical research in
China, producing a generation of influential Chinese mathematicians.[7][5]

Chern founded the Nankai Institute for Mathematics (NKIM) at his alma mater Nankai in Tianjin. The
institute was formally established in 1984 and fully opened on October 17, 1985. NKIM was renamed the
Chern Institute of Mathematics in 2004 after Chern's death. He was treated as a rock star and cultural icon
in China.[7] Regarding his influence in China and help raising a generation of new mathematicians,
ZALA films says:[7]

Several world-renowned figures, such as Gang Tian and Shing-Tung Yau, consider Chern the
mentor who helped them study in western countries following the bleak years of the Cultural
Revolution, when Chinese universities were closed and academic pursuits suppressed. By the
time Chern started returning to China regularly during the 1980s, he had become a celebrity;
every school child knew his name, and TV cameras documented his every move whenever he
ventured forth from the institute he established at Nankai University.[7]

He has said that back then the main obstruent to the growth of math in China is the low pay, which is
important considering that after the cultural revolution many families were impoverished. But he has said
that given China's size, it naturally has a large talent pool of budding mathematicians.[5] Nobel Prize
winner and former student CN Yang has said[24]

Chern and I and many others felt that we have the responsibility to try to create more
understanding between the American people and the Chinese people, and... all of us shared
the desire to promote more exchanges.

Final years and death

In 1999, Chern moved from Berkeley back to Tianjin, China permanently until his death.[7]
Based on Chern's advice, a mathematical research center was established in Taipei, Taiwan, whose co-
operational partners are National Taiwan University, National Tsing Hua University and the Academia
Sinica Institute of Mathematics.[25]

In 2002, he convinced the Chinese government (the PRC) for the first time to host the International
Congress of Mathematicians in Beijing.[24] In the speech at the opening ceremony he said:[26]

The great Confucius guided China spiritually for over 2,000 years. The main doctrine is “仁”
pronounced “ren”, meaning two people, i.e., human relationship. Modern science has been
highly competitive. I think an injection of the human element will make our subject more
healthy and enjoyable. Let us wish that this congress will open a new era in the future
development of math.

Chern was also a director and advisor of the Center of Mathematical Sciences at Zhejiang University in
Hangzhou, Zhejiang.

Chern died of heart failure at Tianjin Medical University General Hospital in 2004 at age 93.[27]

In 2010 George Csicsery featured him in the documentary short Taking the Long View: The Life of
Shiing-shen Chern.[28]

His former residence, Ningyuan (寧園), is still in campus of Nankai University, kept in the way when he
was living there. Every year on December 3, Ningyuan is open for visitors for memorial of him.

Research
Physics Nobel Prize winner (and former student) C. N. Yang has said that Chern is on par with Euclid,
Gauss, Riemann, Cartan. Two of Chern's most important contributions that have reshaped the fields of
geometry and topology include

Chern-Gauss-Bonnet Theorem, the generalization of the famous Gauss–Bonnet theorem

(100 years earlier) to higher dimensional manifolds. Chern considers this his greatest
work.[12] Chern proved it by developing his geometric theory of fiber bundles.[5]
Chern classes, the complexification of Pontryagin classes, which have found wide-reaching
applications in modern physics, especially string theory, quantum field theory, condensed
matter physics, in things like the magnetic monopole. His main idea was that one should do
geometry and topology in the complex case.[5]
In 2007, Chern's disciple and IAS director Phillip Griffiths edited Inspired by S. S. Chern: A Memorial
Volume in Honor of A Great Mathematician (World Scientific Press). Griffiths wrote:[12]

“More than any other mathematician, Shiing-Shen Chern defined the subject of global
differential geometry, a central area in contemporary mathematics. In work that spanned
almost seven decades, he helped to shape large areas of modern mathematics... I think that
he, more than anyone, was the founder of one of the central areas of modern mathematics.”
His work extended over all the classic fields of differential geometry as well as more modern ones
including general relativity, invariant theory, characteristic classes, cohomology theory, Morse theory,
Fiber bundles, Sheaf theory, Cartan's theory of differential forms, etc. His work included areas currently-
fashionable, perennial, foundational, and nascent:[2][29]

Chern–Simons theory arising from a 1974 paper written jointly with Jim Simons; and also
gauge theory, Chern–Simons form, Chern-Simons field theory. CS theory now has great
importance in knot theory and modern string theory and condensed matter physics
research, including Topological phases of matter and Topological quantum field theory.
Chern–Weil theory linking curvature invariants to characteristic classes from 1944
class theory for Hermitian manifolds
Chern-Bott theory, including the Chern-Bott theorem, a famous result on complex
geometrizations of complex value distribution functions
value distribution theory of holomorphic functions[30][31]
Chern-Lashof theory on tight immersions, compiled in a monograph over 30 years with
Richard Lashof at Chicago[32]
Chern-Lashof theorem: a proof was announced in 1989 by Sharpe[33]
projective differential geometry
webs
integral geometry, including the 'moving theorem' (運動定理), in collaboration with Yan Zhida
minimal surfaces, minimal submanifolds and harmonic mappings
Exterior Differential Systems and Partial Differential Equations
He was a follower of Élie Cartan, working on the 'theory of equivalence' in his time in China from 1937
to 1943, in relative isolation. In 1954 he published his own treatment of the pseudogroup problem that is
in effect the touchstone of Cartan's geometric theory. He used the moving frame method with success
only matched by its inventor; he preferred in complex manifold theory to stay with the geometry, rather
than follow the potential theory. Indeed, one of his books is entitled "Complex Manifolds without
Potential Theory".

Differential forms
Along with Cartan, Chern is one of the mathematicians known for popularizing the use of differential
forms in math and physics. In his biography, Richard Palais and Chuu-Lian Terng have written[29]

... we would like to point out a unifying theme that runs through all of it: his absolute mastery
of the techniques of differential forms and his artful application of these techniques in
solving geometric problems. This was a magic mantle, handed down to him by his great
teacher, Élie Cartan. It permitted him to explore in depth new mathematical territory where
others could not enter. What makes differential forms such an ideal tool for studying local
and global geometric properties (and for relating them to each other) is their two
complementary aspects. They admit, on the one hand, the local operation of exterior
differentiation, and on the other the global operation of integration over cochains, and these
are related via Stokes's Theorem.

While at the IAS, there were two competing methods of geometry: the tensor calculus and the newer
differential forms. Chern wrote:[5]
 I usually like to say that vector fields is like a man, and differential forms is like a woman.
Society must have two sexes. If you only have one, it’s not enough.

In the last years of his life, he advocated the study of Finsler geometry, writing several books and articles
on the subject.[34] His research on Finsler geometry is continued through Tian Gang, Paul C. Yang, and
Sun-Yung Alice Chang of Princeton University.

He was known for unifying geometric and topological methods to prove stunning new results.

Honors and awards

Chern received numerous honors and awards in his life, including:

1970, Chauvenet Prize, of the Mathematical Association of America;[35]

1975, National Medal of Science;[36]
1982, Humboldt Prize, Germany;
1983, Leroy P. Steele Prize, of the American Mathematical Society;
1984, Wolf Prize in Mathematics, Israel;
2002, Lobachevsky Medal;
2004 May, Shaw Prize in mathematical sciences, Hong Kong;[37]
1948, Academician, Academia Sinica;[38]
1950, Honorary Member, Indian Mathematical Society;
1950, Honorary Fellow, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
1961, Member, United States National Academy of Sciences;[39]
1963, Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences;
1971, Corresponding Member, Brazilian Academy of Sciences;
1983, Associate Founding Fellow, TWAS;
1985, Foreign Fellow, Royal Society of London, UK;
1986, Honorary Fellow, London Mathematical Society, UK;
1986, Corresponding Member, Accademia Peloritana, Messina, Sicily;
1987, Honorary Life Member, New York Academy of Sciences;
1989, Foreign Member, Accademia dei Lincei, Italy;
1989, Foreign Member, Académie des sciences, France;
1989, Member, American Philosophical Society;
1994, Foreign Member, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Chern was given a number of honorary degrees, including from The Chinese University of Hong Kong
(LL.D. 1969), University of Chicago (D.Sc. 1969), ETH Zurich (Dr.Math. 1982), Stony Brook University
(D.Sc. 1985), TU Berlin (Dr.Math. 1986), his alma mater Hamburg (D.Sc. 1971) and Nankai (honorary
doctorate, 1985), etc.

Chern was also granted numerous honorary professorships, including at Peking University (Beijing,
1978), his alma mater Nankai (Tianjin, 1978), Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Systems Science
(Beijing, 1980), Jinan University (Guangzhou, 1980), Chinese Academy of Sciences Graduate School
(1984), Nanjing University (Nanjing, 1985), East China Normal University (Shanghai, 1985), USTC
(Hefei, 1985), Beijing Normal University (1985), Zhejiang University (Hangzhou, 1985), Hangzhou
University (1986, the university was merged into Zhejiang University in 1998), Fudan University
(Shanghai, 1986), Shanghai University of Technology (1986, the university was merged to establish
Shanghai University in 1994), Tianjin University (1987), Tohoku University (Sendai, Japan, 1987), etc.

Publications
Shiing Shen Chern, Topics in Differential Geometry, The Institute for Advanced Study,
Princeton 1951
Shiing Shen Chern, Differential Manifolds, University of Chicago 1953
Shiing Shen Chern, Complex Manifolds, University of Chicago, 1956
Shiing Shen Chern: Complex manifolds Without Potential Theory, Springer-Verlag, New
York 1979
Shiing Shen Chern, Minimal Submanifolds in a Riemannian Manifold, University of Kansas
1968
Bao, David Dai-Wai; Chern, Shiing-Shen; Shen, Zhongmin, Editors, Finsler Geometry (htt
p://www.ams.org/books/conm/196/) American Mathematical Society 1996
Shiing-Shen Chern, Zhongmin Shen, Riemann Finsler Geometry, World Scientific 2005
Shiing Shen Chern, Selected Papers, Vol I-IV, Springer
Shiing-Shen Chern, A Simple Intrinsic Proof of the Gauss-Bonnet Formula for Closed
Riemannian Manifolds, Annals of Mathematics, 1944
Shiing-Shen Chern, Characteristic Classes of Hermitian Manifolds, Annals of Mathematics,
1946
Shiing Shen Chern, Geometrical Interpretation of the sinh-Gordon Equation[40]
Shiing Shen Chern, Geometry of a Quadratic Differential Form, Journal of the Society for
Industrial and Applied Mathematics 1962
Shiing Shen Chern, On the Euclidean Connections in a Finsler Space, Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences 1943
Shiing Shen Chern, General Relativity and differential geometry
Shiing Shen Chern, Geometry and physics
Shiing Shen Chern, Web geometry
Shiing Shen Chern, Deformation of surfaces preserving principle curvatures
Shiing Shen Chern, Differential Geometry and Integral Geometry
Shiing Shen Chern, Geometry of G-structures
《陈省身文集》 [Shiing-Shen Chern bibliography]. East China Normal University Press.
Chern, Shiing-Shen. 陈维桓著 《微分几何讲义》.
Shiing-Shen Chern, Wei-Huan Chen, K. S. Lam, Lectures on Differential Geometry, World
Scientific, 1999
David Dai-Wai Bao, Shiing-Shen Chern, Zhongmin Shen, An Introduction to Riemann-
Finsler Geometry, GTM 200, Springer 2000
 David Bao, Robert L. Bryant, Shiing-Shen Chern, Zhongmin Shen, Editors, A Sampler of
Riemann-Finsler Geometry, MSRI Publications 50, Cambridge University Press 2004

Namesake and persona

The asteroid 29552 Chern is named after him;
The Chern Medal, of the International Mathematical
Union (IMU);[41]
The Shiing-Shen Chern Prize (陳省身獎), of the
Association of Chinese Mathematicians;
The Chern Institute of Mathematics at Nankai University,
Tianjin, renamed in 2005 in honor of Chern;
The Chern Lectures, and the Shiing-Shen Chern Chair in
Mathematics, both at the Department of Mathematics,
UC Berkeley.[42]
Chern liked to play contract bridge, Go (game), read Wuxia-
literature of Jin Yong and had an interest in Chinese philosophy
and history.[24]

In 1975, Chen Ning Yang and Chern found out that their research Funeral tombstone of Chern and his
in non-abelian gauge theory and Fiber bundle describe the same wife at Nankai University
theoretical structure, which showed a surprising connection
between physics and mathematics. Therefore, Chern asked Fan
Zeng to finish a chinese painting named Shiing-Shen Chern and
Chen Ning Yang for that. The Painting was later donated to the
Nankai University.

A polyglot, he spoke German, French, English, Wu and Mandarin

Chinese.

“Whenever we had to go to the chancellor to make

some special request, we always took Chern along, The Shiing-Shen Building (省身楼)
and it always worked,” says Berkeley mathematician in Nankai University, in which the
Rob Kirby. “Somehow he had a presence, a gravitas. Chern Institute of Mathematics is
located
There was something about him that people just
listened to him, and usually did things his way.”[7]

The Chern Song

In 1979 a Chern Symposium offered him a honorary song in tribute:[2]

Hail to Chern! Mathematics Greatest!

He made Gauss-Bonnet a household word,

Intrinsic proofs he found,

 Throughout the World his truths abound,

Chern classes he gave us,

and Secondary Invariants,

Fibre Bundles and Sheaves,

Distributions and Foliated Leaves!

All Hail All Hail to CHERN.

It's called the Chern song.[2]

Chern professorships
Allyn Jackson writes[5]

S. S. Chern is the recipient of many international honors, including six honorary doctorates,
the U.S. National Medal of Science, Israel’s Wolf Prize, and membership in learned
academies around the world. He has also received a more homegrown honor, the dream-
turned-reality of an appreciative student of 30 years ago, who grew up in the Bay Area.

When Robert Uomini would buy his 10 tickets for the California State Lottery, he had an
unusual “what if I win?” fantasy: He wanted to endow a professorship to honor S. S. Chern.
While an undergraduate at U.C. Berkeley in the 1960s, Uomini was greatly inspired by a
differential geometry course he took from Chern. With Chern’s support and encouragement,
Uomini entered graduate school at Berkeley and received his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1976.
Twenty years later, while working as a consultant to Sun Microsystems in Palo Alto, Uomini
won $22 million in the state lottery. He could then realize his dream of expressing his
gratitude in a concrete way.

Uomini and his wife set up the Robert G. Uomini and Louise B. Bidwell Foundation to
support an extended visit of an outstanding mathematician to the U.C. Berkeley campus.
There have been three Chern Visiting Professors so far: Sir Michael Atiyah of the University
of Cambridge (1996), Richard Stanley of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1997),
and Friedrich Hirzebruch of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn (1998). Jean-
Pierre Serre of the Collège de France was the Chern Visiting Professor for 1999. [sic]

The foundation also helps to support the Chern Symposium, a yearly one-day event held in
Berkeley during the period when the Chern Visiting Professor is in residence. The March
1998 Symposium was co-sponsored by the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute and
was expanded to run for three days, featuring a dozen speakers.
The MSRI also set up a Chern Professorship, funded by Chern's children May and Paul as well as James
Simons.[43]

Biographies on Chern and other memorabilia

Abraham Pais wrote about Chern in his book Subtle is the Lord. To paraphrase one passage: the
outstanding mathematician Chern has two things to say, 1) I feel very mysterious that in the fields I'm
working on (general relativity and differential geometry) there is so much more that can be explored; and
2) when talking with Albert Einstein (his colleague at the IAS) about his problem of a Grand Unified
Theory, I realized the difference between mathematics and physics is at the heart of the journey towards a
theory of everything.

Manfredo Do Carmo dedicated his book on Riemannian Geometry to Chern, his PhD advisor.

In Yau's autobiography, he talks a lot about his advisor Chern. In 1982, while on sabbatical at the New
York University Courant Institute, he visited Stony Brook to see his friends and former students CN Yang
and Simons.[44]

In 2011 ZALA films published a documentary titled Taking the Long View: the Life of Shiing-shen Chern
(山長水遠). In 2013 it was broadcast on US public television.[7] It was compiled with the help of his
friends including Alan Weinstein, Chuu-Lian Terng, Calvin C. Moore, Marty Shen, Robert Bryant, Robert
Uomini, Robert Osserman, Hung-Hsi Wu, Rob Kirby, CN Yang, Paul Chu, Udo Simon, Phillip Griffiths,
etc.[24]

Dozens of other biographies have been written on Chern. See the citations for more info.

Poetry
Chern was an expressive poet as well. On his 60th birthday he wrote a love letter re-affirming his
gratitude towards his wife and celebrating their 'beautiful, long, happy, marriage':[45]

Thirty-six years together

Through times of happiness

And times of worry too.

Time’s passage has no mercy.

We fly the Skies and cross the Oceans

To fulfill my destiny;

Raising the children fell

Entirely on your shoulders.

How fortunate I am

To have my works to look back upon,

 I feel regrets you still have chores.

Growing old together in El Cerrito is a blessing.

Time passes by,

And we hardly notice.

Students
Chern has 43 students, including Fields medalist Shing-Tung Yau, Nobel Prize winner Chen-Ning Yang;
and over 1000 descendants.[46]

His student James Harris Simons at Stony Brook (co-author of the Chern–Simons theory) later founded
the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies and became a billionaire. Simons talks about Chern in his TED
talk.[47]

Two of his students Manfredo do Carmo and Katsumi Nomizu have written influential textbooks in
geometry.

Former director of the IAS Phillip Griffiths wrote[12]

[Chern] took great pleasure in getting to know and working with and helping to guide young
mathematicians. I was one of them.

Family
His wife, Shih-ning Cheng (Chinese: 鄭士寧; pinyin: Zhèng Shìníng), whom he married in 1939, died in
2000. He also had a daughter, May Chu (陳璞; Chén Pú), wife of the physicist Chu Ching-wu, and a son
named Paul (陳伯龍; Chén Bólóng). On his wife he writes (also see Selected Papers):[2]

I would not conclude this account without mentioning my wife's role in my life and work.
Through war and peace and through bad and good times we have shared a life for forty
years, which is both simple and rich. If there is credit for my mathematical works, it will be
hers as well as mine.

May Chu described her father as an easygoing parent. Paul added that he often saw what was best for you
before you realized it.[24]

See also

Mathematics portal
 China portal

Biography portal

Chern classes
Chern–Gauss–Bonnet theorem
Chern–Simons theory
Chern–Simons form
Chern–Weil theory
Chern–Weil homomorphism
Chern-Lashof theory
Chern-Bott theory

References
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2. "Chern biography" (http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Chern.html). www-
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External links
UC Berkeley obituary (http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/12/06_chern.sht
ml)
1998 interview in Notices of the American Mathematical Society (http://www.ams.org/notice
s/199807/chern.pdf)
Shiing-Shen Chern (https://mathgenealogy.org/id.php?id=6424) at the Mathematics
Genealogy Project
O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Shiing-Shen Chern" (https://mathshistory.st-andr
ews.ac.uk/Biographies/Chern.html), MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of
St Andrews
Shiing-shen Chern: 1911–2004 (http://www.ams.org/bull/2009-46-02/S0273-0979-08-01219-
6/home.html) by H. Wu, biography and overview of mathematical work.
"Shiing-Shen Chern (1911–2004)" (http://www.ams.org/notices/201109/rtx110901226p.pdf)
(PDF), Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 58 (9), Providence, Rhode Island:
American Mathematical Society: 1226–1249, October 2011
Chern's Work in Geometry (https://projecteuclid.org/euclid.ajm/1154098923), by Shing-Tung
Yau

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