Chung Tao Yang

Chung Tao YANG, or Chung-Tao Yang, YANG Zhongdao , was a notable Chinese American topologist . He was a member of the Academia Sinica and served as the chair of the Department of Mathematics, University of Pennsylvania .

Life

He was born in Pingyang County, Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province in May 4, 1923. 1942, Yang graduated from Wenzhou Middle School. Yang graduated from Zhejiang University in 1946 and his main academic advisor was Su Buqing. 1946-1948, he was an assistant in the Department of Mathematics, Zhejiang University .1949-1950, he was a lecturer at National Taiwan University. He was an assistant and later a researcher in the Institute of Mathematics, Academia Sinica.

He went to USA, obtained PhD from Tulane University in 1952. 1952-1954, Yang was an assistant at the University of Illinois. 1954-1956, Yang was a visiting researcher in Princeton. He became an associate professor and then professor in the Department of Mathematics at University of Pennsylvania and served as a chair of the department for many years.

Yang was elected in 1968 to the Academia Sinica. 1992-2004 He was an advisor for the Institute of Mathematics, Academia Sinica .

Research

Yang worked in differential topology and published numerous papers in this field . His best known work was on the Blaschke conjecture. His theorem, combined with the results of others, established the conjecture for spheres.

Yang's earliest research focused on the finite projective geometry. In 1950s, Yang and Deane Montgomery got some ground-breaking results in symmetry group. In the 1980s, he worked mainly on the Blaschke conjecture .