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Eugenio Calabi
Eugenio Calabi.jpeg
Calabi c. 1960s
Born
Eugenio Calabi

(1923-05-11)May 11, 1923
Died September 25, 2023(2023-09-25) (aged 100)
Nationality American
Alma mater Massachusetts Institute of Technology
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (MA)
Princeton University (PhD)
Known for Calabi conjecture
Calabi–Yau manifold
Calabi flow
Calabi triangle
Calabi–Eckmann manifold
Awards Leroy P. Steele Prize (1991)
Putnam Fellow (1946)
Scientific career
Institutions University of Pennsylvania
University of Minnesota
Louisiana State University
Thesis Isometric complex analytic imbedding of Kähler manifolds (1950)
Doctoral advisor Salomon Bochner
Doctoral students Xiu-Xiong Chen

Eugenio Calabi (May 11, 1923 – September 25, 2023) was an Italian-born American mathematician and the Thomas A. Scott Professor of Mathematics, Emeritus, at the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in differential geometry, partial differential equations and their applications.

Early life

Calabi was born in Milan, Italy on May 11, 1923, into a Jewish family. His sister was the journalist Tullia Zevi Calabi. In 1938, the family left Italy because of the racial laws, and in 1939 arrived in the United States.

Academic career

In the fall of 1939, aged only 16, Calabi enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studying chemical engineering. His studies were interrupted when he was drafted in the U.S. military in 1943 and served during World War II. Upon his discharge in 1946, Calabi was able to finish his bachelor's degree under the G.I. Bill, and was a Putnam Fellow. He received a master's degree in mathematics from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1947 and his PhD in mathematics from Princeton University in 1950. His doctoral dissertation, titled "Isometric complex analytic imbedding of Kähler manifolds", was done under the supervision of Salomon Bochner. From 1951 to 1955 he was an assistant professor at Louisiana State University, and he moved to the University of Minnesota in 1955, where he become a full professor in 1960. In 1964, Calabi joined the mathematics faculty at the University of Pennsylvania. Following the retirement of the German-born American mathematician Hans Rademacher, he was appointed to the Thomas A. Scott Professorship of Mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania in 1968. In 1994, Calabi assumed emeritus status, and in 2014 the university awarded him an honorary doctorate of science.

In 1982, Calabi was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He won the Leroy P. Steele Prize from the American Mathematical Society in 1991, where his "fundamental work on global differential geometry, especially complex differential geometry" was cited as having "profoundly changed the landscape of the field". In 2012, he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. In 2021, he was awarded Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.

Calabi married Giuliana Segre in 1952, with whom he had a son and a daughter. He turned 100 on May 11, 2023, and died on September 25.

Research

Calabi made a number of contributions to the field of differential geometry. Other contributions include the construction of a holomorphic version of the long line with Maxwell Rosenlicht, a study of the moduli space of space forms, and various works on affine geometry. In the comments on his collected works in 2021, Calabi cited his article Improper affine hyperspheres of convex type and a generalization of a theorem by K. Jörgens as that which he was "most proud of".

See also

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