Shing-Tung Yau

Today is the birthday of mathematician Shing-Tung Yau, born in Swatow, China, in 1949. The fifth of eight children, he grew up in poverty in Hong Kong. Yau earned his undergraduate degree from Chung Chi College in Hong Kong and then moved to the University of California at Berkeley, where he earned his PhD at age 22. Yau’s specialty is differential geometry, which concerns geometry across many dimensions. Because Einstein’s general theory of relativity posits that gravity and geometry go hand in hand, differential geometry plays an important role. Yau proved the positive mass conjecture of general relativity, which states that the total energy of an isolated system must be positive. He also proved the Calabi conjecture, which has helped mathematicians and physicists understand the geometry of higher dimensions. The Calabi proof is central to the physics behind string theory. Yau has won a MacArthur Fellowship, the Fields Medal, and the Wolf Prize. Lately Yau has reached out to the public with books about extra dimensions and, most recently, China’s quest to build a “Great Collider” for particle physics. Check out the review of his latest book in the April issue of Physics Today.

Date in History: 4 April 1949