Isadore Manuel Singer (May 3, 1924 – February 11, 2021) was an American mathematician. He was an emeritus institute professor in the Department of Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a professor emeritus of Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley.
Singer is noted for his work with Michael Atiyah, proving the Atiyah–Singer index theorem in 1962, which enabled new interactions between pure mathematics and theoretical physics. In early 1980s, while a professor at Berkeley, Singer co-founded the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) with Shiing-Shen Chern and Calvin Moore.
Biography
Early life and education
Singer was born on May 3, 1924, in Detroit, Michigan, to Polish Jewish immigrants. His father Simon was employed as a printer and only spoke Yiddish, and his mother, Freda (Rosemaity), worked as a seamstress. Singer learned English swiftly and subsequently taught it to the rest of his family.
Singer studied physics at the University of Michigan, graduating in 1944 after just two-and-a-half years so that he could join the military. He was stationed in the US Army in the Philippines, where he was a radar officer. During the daytime, he operated a communications school for the Philippine Army. He undertook correspondence courses in mathematics at night in order to satisfy the prerequisites for relativity and quantum mechanics. In discussions between mathematician Jim Simons and physicist Yang Chen-Ning in the 1970s, it was found that the Atiyah–Singer theorem has a number of applications to physics. Inspired by quantum mechanics, it turned out to have reformulations in engineering and computer science. It was finally proved in 2013.
Awards and honors
Singer was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
Among the awards he has received are the Bôcher Memorial Prize (1969) from the American Mathematical Society, the National Medal of Science (1983), the Eugene Wigner Medal (1988), the Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement (2000) from the American Mathematical Society, the Abel Prize (2004) shared with Michael Atiyah, the 2004 Gauss Lecture and the James Rhyne Killian Faculty Achievement Award from MIT (2005).
Personal life
Singer's first marriage was to Sheila Ruff, a play therapist for disabled children; they later divorced. His second marriage was to Rosemarie Singer, and they remained married until his death. He had five children: Stephen (born visually impaired), Eliot, and Natasha (with Sheila); Emily, and Annabelle (with Rosemarie).