I was sorry to hear this morning of the death yesterday at the age of 96 of Is Singer, a mathematician who led much of the interaction between mathematics and physics during the 1970s and 1980s. In the early stages of my career, among mathematicians investigating the amazing relations between mathematics and the quantum field theories describing fundamental physics there were three towering figures: Atiyah, Bott and Singer. That the last of them has now left us marks the end of an era.<\/p>\n
Each of the three had a huge influence on me, both intellectually and personally. Reading their papers and listening to their lectures were great intellectual experiences, shaping early on my understanding of what is central to mathematics and how it fits together with physics. Especially inspirational was the way that they brought together very different fields of mathematics, with Atiyah having his roots in algebraic geometry, Bott in topology and Singer in analysis. Their work together makes a strong case for the unity of mathematics and the relation to physics makes an equally strong case for the unity of mathematics and physics.<\/p>\n
On a personal level, at a time when I was tentatively moving from a career in physics to one in mathematics, getting to meet and talk to each of them had a big impact. Much as I respected the great theoretical physicists I had met, rarely had I found them to be particularly friendly or encouraging, and their attitudes influenced the general atmosphere of the field. Atiyah, Bott and Singer struck me each in their own way as wonderfully warm and enthusiastic personalities, and I believe this influenced the atmosphere among mathematicians working in their fields. They were among the most respected figures in the math community, so their enthusiasm for ideas coming out of physics generated a lot of interest in these ideas among a wide variety of mathematicians.<\/p>\n
Singer had always had an interest in physics, majoring in physics as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, then after the war going to graduate school in mathematics at the University of Chicago. I highly recommend reading or watching this long interview with him from 2010<\/a>, where you can learn the story of his career. <\/p>\n A mathematical high point of this career was his work during the early 1960s with Atiyah that led to the Atiyah-Singer index theorem. A crucial part of this story was Atiyah in 1962 asking Singer why the A-roof genus was integral. Singer realized that this was because it counts the number of solutions of an equation, and that the equation was the Dirac equation. This example in some sense generates a huge amount of mathematics which is described by the index theorem, and which links together very different mathematical fields. On this and other topics, well-worth reading is the 2004 interview with Atiyah and Singer<\/a> after they were awarded one of the first Abel Prizes.<\/p>\n One can trace much of the history of the modern interaction of mathematics and quantum field theory to an origin back in the summer of 1976, when Singer visited Stony Brook and talked to physicists there about gauge theories, geometry and the BPST instanton (Simons and Yang a year earlier had started to realize how gauge theory, geometry and topology were linked). The next year he was in Oxford working with Atiyah and Hitchin on instantons, which really set off an explosive development of new ideas, inspiring and fascinating both mathematicians and physicists.<\/p>\n Singer spent the years from 1977 to 1983 at Berkeley, which he turned into a major center for this new mathematical physics. During this time he was also one of the founders of MSRI, which to this day plays a major role in worldwide mathematical research. After 1983 he returned to MIT, from which he retired in 2010. I believe the last time I saw him was at his 85th birthday conference, which I wrote about here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Update<\/strong>: The New York Times has an obituary here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Update<\/strong>: Dan Freed (who was a graduate student of Singer’s) has a piece about Singer at Quanta magazine here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was sorry to hear this morning of the death yesterday at the age of 96 of Is Singer, a mathematician who led much of the interaction between mathematics and physics during the 1970s and 1980s. In the early stages … Continue reading