- Bott, Raoul
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▪ 2006Hungarian American mathematician (b. Sept. 24, 1923, Budapest, Hung.—d. Dec. 20, 2005, Carlsbad, Calif.), was the winner of the 2000 Wolf Prize in Mathematics for his contributions in topology and differential geometry, especially applications to mathematical physics. His early life was filled with tragedy; his parents divorced soon after his birth, and shortly thereafter first his mother (1935) and then his father (1937) died of cancer. With the ever-increasing likelihood of war in Europe, he left for England in 1939 with his stepfather. A year later they immigrated to Canada, where Bott earned an engineering degree (1945) from McGill University, Montreal, before enlisting in the Canadian army. After military service he earned a master's degree (1946) from McGill before moving (1947) to the U.S. In 1949 Bott earned a doctorate of science from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon University) in Pittsburgh. After graduation he held academic appointments at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J. (1949–51; 1955–57), the University of Michigan (1951–55; 1957–59), and Harvard University (1959–2005). Perhaps his most famous result was his proof (with Sir Michael Atiyah) of the Atiyah-Bott fixed-point theorem, which showed the existence of “fixed points” (stable solutions) to certain types of mathematical mappings and gave a method for determining the number of such fixed points. Among Bott's awards were the 1964 Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry from the American Mathematical Society (AMS), a 1987 National Medal of Science, and in 1990 the AMS Leroy P. Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement.
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Universalium. 2010.