Ivan Smith (mathematician) facts for kids

Ivan Smith (born 1973) is a British mathematician. He studies special shapes and spaces using math. He is a professor at the University of Cambridge. In 2023, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). This is a big honor for scientists.

About Ivan Smith

Ivan Smith was born in 1973. His father, Neil Smith, was a professor of language studies. Ivan went to the University of Oxford for his studies. He earned his highest degree, a doctorate, in 1999. His main teacher there was Simon Donaldson, another famous mathematician. Ivan's special project was about "Symplectic Geometry of Lefschetz Fibrations." This is a very advanced topic in math.

Today, Ivan Smith teaches at Gonville & Caius College. This college is part of the University of Cambridge.

His Work in Mathematics

Ivan Smith's work is in an area called symplectic topology. This field combines different parts of math. It looks at how shapes and spaces behave. He also connects his work to algebraic geometry and low-dimensional topology. These are all ways to understand complex mathematical structures.

Awards and Recognition

Ivan Smith has received important awards for his math work.

• In 2007, he won the Whitehead Prize. This award recognized his wide-ranging work in symplectic topology. It showed how he used ideas from different math areas.
• In 2013, he was awarded the Adams Prize. This is another respected award for mathematicians.
• In 2018, he was invited to speak at a very important meeting. This was the International Congress of Mathematicians in Rio de Janeiro. Only top mathematicians are asked to speak there.
• In 2023, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. This means he is part of a group of the most respected scientists in the United Kingdom.

Selected Publications

Ivan Smith has written many important papers. These papers share his new ideas and discoveries in math. Here are a few examples:

• With Denis Auroux: Lefschetz pencils, branched covers and symplectic invariants. This paper was published in 2008.
• With Mohammed Abouzaid: "Homological mirror symmetry for the 4-torus". This work came out in 2010.
• Floer cohomology and pencils of quadrics. This paper was published in 2012.
• "A symplectic prolegomenon". This article appeared in 2015.
• Quiver algebras as Fukaya categories. This paper was published in 2015.
• With Mohammed Abouzaid: Khovanov homology from Floer cohomology. This was published in 2015.
• With Mohammed Abouzaid: The symplectic arc algebra is formal. This paper came out in 2016.