SimonDonaldson 2006-10-30 12:51:22 2006-10-30 12:51:22 Biography % this is the default PlanetMath preamble. as your knowledge % of TeX increases, you will probably want to edit this, but % it should be fine as is for beginners. % almost certainly you want these \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{amsfonts} % used for TeXing text within eps files %\usepackage{psfrag} % need this for including graphics (\includegraphics) %\usepackage{graphicx} % for neatly defining theorems and propositions %\usepackage{amsthm} % making logically defined graphics %\usepackage{xypic} % there are many more packages, add them here as you need them % define commands here \emph{Simon Kirwan Donaldson} (1957 - ) British mathematician, perhaps famous for his work on the topology of smooth four-dimensional manifolds published when he was still a graduate student. Earning a bachelor's in mathematics from Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1979, Donaldson began postgraduate work at Worcester College, Oxford, in 1980. In 1983 he published the famous paper "Self-dual connections and the topology of smooth 4-manifolds" which appeared in 1983 (the same year he got a doctorate degree from Oxford). Michael Atiyah said that that paper "stunned the mathematical world." In 1986, Donaldson was awarded the Fields medal, and almost a decade later, he was awarded the Crafoord Prize in mathematics with Shing-Tung Yau.