Shiing-shen Chern, 93, Mathematician
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Shiing-shen Chern, a Chinese-American mathematician famed for discoveries in differential geometry, died Friday in the northeastern Chinese city of Tianjin, the Xinhua News Agency announced. He was 93.
Chern’s particular field of research led to the development of the later named Chern characteristic classes in fiber spaces that came to play a role in a wide area of mathematics and mathematical physics.
Chern taught during World War II both in China and at Princeton University in America. He later taught at the University of California at Berkeley, where a mathematics chair was endowed in his name.
Chern returned to China after the death of the communist state’s founder, Mao Zedong, in 1976, and in 1985 established the Institute for Mathematics at Nankai and served as its first director.
