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Jerry Kazdan

Jerry Lawrence Kazdan (born 31 October 1937 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American mathematician noted for his work in differential geometry and the study of partial differential equations. His contributions include the Berger–Kazdan comparison theorem, which was a key step in the proof of the Blaschke conjecture and the classification of Wiedersehen manifolds. His best-known work, done in collaboration with Frank Warner, dealt with the problem of prescribing the scalar curvature of a Riemannian metric.

Jerry Kazdan in 1974

Biography

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Kazdan received his bachelor's degree in 1959 from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and his master's degree in 1961 from NYU. He obtained his PhD in 1963 from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University; his thesis was entitled A Boundary Value Problem Arising in the Theory of Univalent Functions and was supervised by Paul Garabedian.[1] He then took a position as a Benjamin Peirce Instructor at Harvard University. Since 1966, he has been a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dennis DeTurck was a student of his.[2]

Honours

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In 1999 he received the Lester Randolph Ford Award for his expository article Solving equations, an elegant legacy.[3] In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.[4]

Major publications

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  • DeTurck, Dennis M.; Kazdan, Jerry L. Some regularity theorems in Riemannian geometry. Ann. Sci. École Norm. Sup. (4) 14 (1981), no. 3, 249–260.
  • Kazdan, Jerry L.; Warner, F.W. Curvature functions for compact 2-manifolds. Ann. of Math. (2) 99 (1974), 14–47.
  • Kazdan, Jerry L.; Warner, F.W. Remarks on some quasilinear elliptic equations. Comm. Pure Appl. Math. 28 (1975), no. 5, 567–597.
  • Kazdan, Jerry L.; Warner, F.W. Scalar curvature and conformal deformation of Riemannian structure. Journal of Differential Geometry 10 (1975), 113–134.
  • Kazdan, Jerry L.; Warner, F.W. Existence and conformal deformation of metrics with prescribed Gaussian and scalar curvatures. Ann. of Math. (2) 101 (1975), 317–331.

Books

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  • Lectures on Complex Numbers and Infinite Series (1966)
  • Calculus Two: Linear and Nonlinear Functions[5] (1971, with Francis J. Flanigan)
  • Intermediate Calculus And Linear Algebra (1975)
  • Prescribing the Curvature of a Riemannian Manifold (1985)[6]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Jerry Kazdan at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  2. ^ Jerry Kazdan at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  3. ^ Kazdan, J. L. (1998). "Solving equations, an elegant legacy" (PDF). Amer. Math. Monthly. 105 (1): 1–21. doi:10.2307/2589521. JSTOR 2589521.
  4. ^ List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society, retrieved 2013-01-27.
  5. ^ Fisher, C. F. (1992-01-01). "Review of Calculus Two: Linear and Non-Linear Functions". The Mathematical Gazette. 76 (476): 313. doi:10.2307/3619174. JSTOR 3619174.
  6. ^ Chern, S. S. (1987). "Review: Prescribing the curvature of a Riemannian manifold by Jerry L. Kazdan". Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.). 16 (1): 143–144. doi:10.1090/s0273-0979-1987-15491-7.
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