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Biographical Memoirs Volume 82 (2003) / Chapter Skim
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Hermann Weyl
Pages 320-335

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From page 321...
... It is somewhat unusual to write a biographical memoir nearly 50 years after the cleath of the subject, en cl this presents me with both difficulties and opportunities. The difficulties are obvious: I had essentially no personal contact with WeyT, hearing him lecture only once at the international congress in Amsterdam in 1954, when I was a research student.
From page 322...
... Hermann Weyl was born in the small town of Elmshorn near Hamburg, the son of Ludwig en cl Anna WeyI. In 1904 he went to Gottingen University en cl immecliately fell uncler the spell of the great Davic!
From page 323...
... But I believe that, leaving aside my own peculiar nature, there is in mathematics itself, in contrast to the experimental disciplines, a character which is nearer to that of free creative art. As this quotation (ancl others)
From page 324...
... " After Wey1's death the subject clevelopecl much further, leacling among other things to the heat equation proof of the Atiyah-Singer inclex theorem (Atlyah, Bott, en cl Patocli, 1973) en cl to the regularizecl determinants that became a basic tool in quantum field theory.
From page 325...
... Here we see Wey! at his maj estic best, imposing coherence, elegance, and order on a classical subject and thereby laying proper foundations for its future development.
From page 326...
... Despite his age (he was 69) Weyl gave a cletailecl en cl enthusiastic account of all this work, which by combining geometry en cl analysis in the spirit of his own earlier work was very close to his heart.
From page 327...
... One of the most elegant of Wey1's theorems was his beautiful explicit formula for the character of the irreclucible representations. This formula has kept reappearing in subsequent work.
From page 328...
... But now it is firmly in the Weyl moIcl en cl has been given a fresh impetus by David Mumford under the heading of geometric invariant theory (MumforcI, Fogarty, en cl F Kirwan, 1994~.
From page 329...
... Wey1's definitive work on representation theory together with his interest in spectral theory macle him the icleal exponent of the new physics. Von Neumann was some years younger than Wey1, but he was a prodigy with a formiciable reputation.
From page 330...
... Weyl hac! the iclea of extending Einstein's theory to incorporate electromagnetism, so that Maxwell's equations wouIcl also acquire geometrical significance.
From page 331...
... The past 25 years have seen the rise of gauge theoriesKaluza-Klein moclels of high dimensions, string theories, en cl now M theory, as physicists grapple with the challenge of combining all the basic forces of nature into one all embracing theory. This requires sophisticates!
From page 332...
... 1994. Geometric Invariant Theory.
From page 333...
... .. Uber die Bestimmung einer geschlossenen konvexen Flache durch ihr Linienelement.
From page 334...
... Die Vollstandigkeit der primitiven Darstellungen einer geschlossenen kontinuierlichen Gruppe.
From page 335...
... 1:161-74. 1968 Hermann Weyl Gesammelte Abhaund lunger.


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