Third Annotation and Thesis Statement

10/25/08

http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/senate/inmemoriam/shiingshenchern.htm


This article gives a main detailed biography of Chern's life, he only had one day of elementary education, and four years at middle high school, at aged 15, he skippe two greades to enter the Nankai University, and how he opened his eyes to the grand vistas in geometry. And three major decisions in the period 1934 to 1943 that shaped the rest of his life.

This article references primary and secondary source, including the picture of Chern's and this article was created after Chern was passed away.

Thesis Statement

Shiing Shen Chern who was a Chinese American mathematician. In 1934, he earned a chance to study aborad, and he chose to went to Europe instead of U.S, and then in 1936, use a postdoctoral fellowship for study in Europe to study with Elie Cartan in Paris. Later in 1943, he made one of his most important disicion in his life to go to visit the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) at Princeton. Chern, who had made a big improvement in geometry, that he made a major discovery, namely, an intrinsic proof of the n-dimensional Gauss-Bonnet theorem. This important proof was the forerunner of other invariants which bear his name, Chern classes, Chern-Weil homomorphism and Chern-Simons invariants, which have become essential tools not only in differential geometry but in other areas of mathematics such as topology and algebraic geometry and also mathematical physics. A large part of modern algebraic geometry would not exist without Chern classes. Chern's efforts on geometry made scientist take a big step toward the world.