Stephen Shing-Toung Yau

{{Infobox person

| name = Stephen Shing-Toung Yau

| native_name = 丘成棟

| native_name_lang = zh

| birth_date = {{Birth year and age|1952}}

| birth_place = British Hong Kong

| nationality = American

| alma_mater = Chinese University of Hong Kong (BSc)
State University of New York at Stony Brook (MA, PhD)

| occupation = Mathematician

| years_active = 1976–present

| employer = Tsinghua University

| known_for = Discovering the "Yau algebra" and "Yau number"; co-founding Journal of Algebraic Geometry and Communications in Information and Systems

}}

Stephen Shing-Toung Yau ({{zh|t=丘成棟|p=Qiū Chéngdòng}}; born 1952) is a Chinese-American mathematician. He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and currently teaches at Tsinghua University. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Mathematical Society.

Biography

Shing-Toung Yau was born in 1952 in British Hong Kong,{{Cite news |title=学术报告 |url=http://kjc.hrbeu.edu.cn/2012/0810/c3499a123627/page.htm|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190817005710/http://kjc.hrbeu.edu.cn/2012/0810/c3499a123627/page.htm|date=2012-08-10|archive-date=17 August 2019|access-date=2019-08-17|website=Harbin Engineering University|language=zh}} with his ancestral home in Jiaoling County, Guangdong, China. He is the younger brother of Fields Medalist Shing-Tung Yau.{{Cite web|last=|first=|date=2018-06-06|title=丘成桐院士关注家乡蕉岭仓海诗廊文化建设项目|url=http://mini.eastday.com/a/180606031309193.html|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190817005009/http://mini.eastday.com/a/180606031309193.html|archive-date=17 August 2019|access-date=2019-08-17|website=Eastday|language=zh}}

After graduating from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, he studied mathematics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he learnt after Henry Laufer and earned his M.A. in 1974 and Ph.D. in 1976.{{Cite web|last=|first=|date=2019-07-11|title=Stephen Shing-Toung Yau|url=http://homepages.math.uic.edu/~yau/yauvitae.pdf|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=2019-08-16|website=University of Illinois at Chicago|language=en}}{{Cite web|last=|first=|date=|title=Stephen S. -T Yau|url=https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/author/37287943600|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=2019-08-17|website=IEEE Xplore|language=en}}

He was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton from 1976 to 1977 and from 1981 to 1982, and was a Benjamin Pierce Assistant Professor at Harvard University from 1977 to 1980. He subsequently taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago for more than 30 years. He was named the UIC Distinguished Professor in 2005.

From 2002 to 2011, Yau also served as the Zi-Jiang Professor at East China Normal University in Shanghai, as well as Director of the university's Institute of Mathematics. After retiring from UIC in 2012, he joined Tsinghua University as a full-time professor.

Research

Among Yau's research interests are bioinformatics, complex algebraic geometry, singularities theory, and nonlinear filtering. He published nearly 300 papers and established the "Yau algebra" and the "Yau number".{{Cite web|last=瑛|first=杨|date=2012-08-13|title=复几何、奇点理论及相关领域国际会议在清华举行|url=https://www.tsinghua.edu.cn/publish/thunews/10303/2012/20120813152615411357568/20120813152615411357568_.html|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190817011745/https://www.tsinghua.edu.cn/publish/thunews/10303/2012/20120813152615411357568/20120813152615411357568_.html|archive-date=17 August 2019|access-date=2019-08-17|website=Tsinghua University|language=zh}} He served as Chairman of the IEEE International Conference on Control and Information and co-founded the Journal of Algebraic Geometry in 1991. He founded the journal Communications in Information and Systems in 2000, and has served as Editor-in-Chief since its inception.