Sir Michael Atiyah, awarded an honorary doctorate from UPC

Sir Michael Atiyah has been be awarded an honorary doctorate from UPC on 25 April. He has been the first mathematician to receive this honour.

Michael Atiyah, an expert in geometry, has helped break down the walls between different fields of knowledge. He has made contributions to topology, geometry and analysis. The International Mathematical Union awarded him the Fields Medal for topological K-theory, which he developed with F. Hirzebruch. Together with Isadore Singer, he won the Abel Prize of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters for the Atiyah–Singer index theorem, which has built bridges between mathematics and physics. It has even been used in string theory, which tries to describe the beginning of the universe. Atiyah has spent most of his career at Oxford and Cambridge and has received a long list of honours.

About the honorary doctorate ceremony:
Honorary degree speech by Sir Michael F. Atiyah [pdf]
Laudatio of Sir Michael F. Atiyah by professor Sebastià Xambó [pdf]

About Michael Atiyah:
"At the heart of mathematics, there's human imagination", interview with Michael Atiyah, Informacions 206, March 2008 [pdf].
Sir Michael Atiyah biography
Posters about Michael Atiyah's career:
Childhood, youth and early research [pdf]
Early landmarks [pdf]
Fields Medal and the bridge to physics [pdf]
European Mathematical Society and the third European Congress of Mathematics [pdf]
The Abel Prize [pdf]
Collected Works / Structure [pdf]
Collected Works / Unfolding [pdf]
Full Colour [pdf]


Further information:
Media Office. Technical University of Catalonia (UPC)
Tel. 93 401 61 43 - Fax 93 401 56 87
a/e: oficina.mitjans.comunicacio@upc.edu