Kenkichi Iwasawa facts for kids

Kenkichi Iwasawa (岩澤 健吉 Iwasawa Kenkichi) was a brilliant Japanese mathematician. He was born on September 11, 1917, and passed away on October 26, 1998. He is especially famous for his important work in a field of math called algebraic number theory.

His Life and Education

Kenkichi Iwasawa was born in Shinshuku-mura, a small town near Kiryū in Gunma Prefecture, Japan. He went to elementary school there. Later, he moved to Tokyo to attend Musashi High School.

From 1937 to 1940, Iwasawa studied at Tokyo Imperial University. After finishing his undergraduate studies, he continued his education at the University of Tokyo. He became an assistant in the Department of Mathematics. In 1945, he earned his Doctor of Science degree.

Sadly, in 1945, Iwasawa became very sick with pleurisy, a lung illness. Because of this, he could not return to his job at the university until April 1947. From 1949 to 1955, he worked as an assistant professor at the University of Tokyo.

Moving to the United States

In 1950, Iwasawa received an invitation to visit Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States. He was asked to give a lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians. He talked about his special way of studying certain math functions. Another mathematician, John Tate, also discovered this method. Sometimes, it is called Iwasawa–Tate theory.

Iwasawa then spent two years at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In the spring of 1952, he was offered a job at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He worked there until 1967.

From 1967 until he retired in 1986, Iwasawa was a Professor of Mathematics at Princeton. After his retirement, he and his wife returned to Tokyo in 1987.

His Famous Students

Iwasawa taught many students who became successful mathematicians themselves. Some of his well-known students include:

• Robert F. Coleman
• Bruce Ferrero
• Ralph Greenberg
• Gustave Solomon
• Larry Washington
• Eugene M. Luks

His Mathematical Discoveries

Kenkichi Iwasawa is most famous for creating something called Iwasawa theory. He developed this theory in the late 1950s while studying special numbers called cyclotomic fields. This theory helps mathematicians understand how certain numbers behave in a very deep way.

Before developing Iwasawa theory, he also worked on other important math topics. These included Lie groups and Lie algebras. He introduced a general concept known as the Iwasawa decomposition. This is a way to break down complex mathematical structures into simpler parts.

See also

• Iwasawa group
• Anabelian geometry
• Fermat's Last Theorem