Hyman Bass (born 1932) is an American
mathematicianA mathematician is a person whose primary area of study and/or research is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with particular problems related to logic, space, transformations, numbers and more general ideas which encompass these concepts...
, known for work in algebra. From 1959-1998 he was Professor in the Mathematics Department at
Columbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City...
, where he is now professor emeritus. He is currently the Roger Lyndon Collegiate Professor of Mathematics and Professor of Mathematics Education at the
University of MichiganThe University of Michigan, Ann Arbor is a public research university located in the state of Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university, the flagship campus of the University of Michigan, and one of the top public universities in the world...
.
Life
He earned his Ph.D. in 1959 from the
University of ChicagoThe University of Chicago is a private, coeducational research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by oil magnate and benefactor John D...
. His thesis, titled
Global dimensions of rings, was written under the supervision of
Irving KaplanskyIrving Kaplansky was a Canadian mathematician. He was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada after his parents emigrated from Poland and attended the University of Toronto as an undergraduate. After receiving his Ph.D...
.
He has held visiting appointments at the
Institute for Advanced StudyThe Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States, is a center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. The Institute is perhaps best known as the academic home of Albert Einstein, John von Neumann, and Kurt Gödel, after their immigration to the United...
in
PrincetonPrinceton, New Jersey is located in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. Princeton University has been sited in the town since 1756. Although Princeton is a "college town", there are other important institutions in the area, including the Institute for Advanced Study, Educational Testing...
,
IHESThe Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques is a French institute supporting advanced research in mathematics and theoretical physics...
and
ENSEns may refer to:*Ens , a village in the Dutch province of Flevoland*Ens, Hautes-Pyrénées, a town in FranceENS may also refer to:*École Normale Supérieure, a set of four higher education institutions in France...
(Paris),
Tata InstituteThe Tata Institute of Fundamental Research is a premier institution in India for higher education and research. The main academic disciplines studied at the institute are natural sciences, mathematics and theoretical computer science. It is located at Navy Nagar Colaba, Mumbai...
(Bombay),
University of CambridgeThe University of Cambridge , located in the City of Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom, is the second oldest university in the English-speaking world and the fourth oldest in Europe...
,
UC BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley is a public research university located in Berkeley, California, United States. The oldest of the ten major campuses affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley offers some 300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines...
,
University of RomeSapienza University of Rome, officially Sapienza - Università di Roma, commonly known as Università di Roma "La Sapienza", is a coeducational, autonomous state university in Rome, Italy. It is the largest European university and the oldest of Rome's three state-funded universities; Sapienza was...
, IMPA (Rio),
National Autonomous University of MexicoThe National Autonomous University of Mexico is a public university based primarily in Mexico City and generally considered to be the largest one-campus university in the Americas in terms of student population...
,
Mittag-Leffler InstituteThe Mittag-Leffler Institute is a mathematical research institute located in Djursholm, a suburb of Stockholm. It invites scholars to participate in year-long or half-year programs in specialized mathematical subjects...
(Stockholm), and the
University of UtahThe University of Utah, also known as the U or the U of U, is a public, coeducational research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. The university was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret by the General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret, making it Utah's oldest...
. He was president of the
American Mathematical SocietyThe American Mathematical Society is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, which it does with various publications and conferences as well as annual monetary awards and prizes to mathematicians.The society is one of the...
.
Bass formerly chaired the Mathematical Sciences Education Board (1992-2000) at the
United States National Academy of SciencesThe National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine."The group holds a congressional charter under Title 36 of the United States Code....
, and the Committee on Education of the American Mathematical Society. He is now President of ICMI. Since 1996 he has been collaborating with Deborah Ball and her research group at the University of Michigan on the mathematical knowledge and resources entailed in the teaching of mathematics at the elementary level. He has worked to build bridges between diverse professional communities and stakeholders involved in
mathematics educationMathematics education is the practice of teaching and learning mathematics, as well as the field of scholarly research on this practice. Researchers in mathematics education are in the primarily concerned with the tools, methods and approaches that facilitate practice or the study of practice...
.
Work
His research interests have been in
algebraic K-theoryIn mathematics, algebraic K-theory is an important part of homological algebra concerned with defining and applying a sequenceof functors from rings to abelian groups, for all integers n....
,
commutative algebraCommutative algebra is the branch of abstract algebra that studies commutative rings, their ideals, and modules over such rings. Both algebraic geometry and algebraic number theory build on commutative algebra...
and
algebraic geometryAlgebraic geometry is a branch of mathematics which, as the name suggests, combines techniques of abstract algebra, especially commutative algebra, with the language and the problems of geometry. It occupies a central place in modern mathematics and has multiple conceptual connections with such...
,
algebraic groupIn algebraic geometry, an algebraic group is a group that is an algebraic variety, such that the multiplication and inverse are given by regular functions on the variety...
s, geometric methods in
group theoryIn mathematics and abstract algebra, group theory studies the algebraic structures known as groups.The concept of a group is central to abstract algebra: other well-known algebraic structures, such as rings, fields, and vector spaces can all be seen as groups endowed with additional operations and...
, and
ζ functionsIn mathematics, a zeta function is a function analogous to the original example: the Riemann zeta function Zeta functions include:* Artin–Mazur zeta-function of a dynamical system* Dedekind zeta-function of a number field...
on finite simple graphs.
External links