Yum-Tong Siu


Yum-Tong Siu is the William Elwood Byerly Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University.
Siu is a prominent figure in the mathematics of several complex variables. His research interests involve the intersection of complex variables, differential geometry, and algebraic geometry. He has resolved various conjectures by applying estimates of the complex Neumann problem and the theory of multiplier ideal sheaves to algebraic geometry.

Education and career

Siu obtained his BA in mathematics from the University of Hong Kong in 1963, his M.A. from the University of Minnesota, and his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1966.
Siu completed his doctoral dissertation, titled "Coherent Noether-Lasker decomposition of subsheaves and sheaf cohomology", under the supervision of Robert C. Gunning. Before joining Harvard, he taught at Purdue University, the University of Notre Dame, Yale, and Stanford. In 1982 he joined Harvard as a Professor, of Mathematics. He previously served as the Chairman of the Harvard Math Department.
In 2006, Siu published a proof of the finite generation of the pluricanonical ring.

Awards, Honors and Professional Memberships

In 1993, Siu received the Stefan Bergman Prize of the American Mathematical Society. He has holds honorary doctorates from the University of Hong Kong, University of Bochum, Germany, and University of Macau. He is a Corresponding Member of the Goettingen Academy of Sciences ; a Foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences ; and a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and Academia Sinica, Taiwan. He has been an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Helsinki, Warsaw and Beijing.
Currently, Siu is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Clay Mathematics Institute ; the Advisory Committee for the Shaw Prize In Mathematical Sciences ; the Advisory Committee for the Millennium Prize Problems under the sponsorship of the Clay Mathematics Institute; the Scientific Advisory Board for the Institute for Mathematics Sciences, National University of Singapore and the Institute of Advanced Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.