David Bryant MUMFORD

Personal Homepage: http://www.dam.brown.edu/people/mumford/

Born:

June 11, 1937, Three Bridges, Sussex, England

Education:

1957 B.A., Magna Cum Laude, Harvard College
1961 Ph.D., Harvard University

Positions:

1961-1962 Instructor and Research Fellow in Mathematics, Harvard University
1962-1963 Assistant Professor, Harvard University
1962-1963 Member, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton and Visiting Professor, University of Tokyo
1963-1967 Associate Professor, Harvard University
1967-1977 Professor, Harvard University
1967-1968 Visiting Professor, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
1970-1971 Nuffield Professor, University of Warwick
1976-1977 Visiting Professor, Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques, Paris
1977- Higgins Professor of Mathematics, Harvard University
1978-1979 Visiting Professor, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
1981-1984 Chairman, Department of Mathematics, Harvard University
1985- Member, Division of Applied Science, Harvard University
1991-1994 Vice-President, International Mathematical Union
1993 Rothschild Professor, Isaac Newton Institute, Cambridge University
1995-1998 President, International Mathematical Union

Selected Awards, Honours and Distinctions

1953 Westinghouse Science Talent Search, finalist
1958-1961 Society of Fellows, Harvard University, Junior Fellow
1974 Fields Medal, International Congress of Mathematics
1975 Elected to the National Academy of Sciences
1978 Honorary Fellow, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
1983 Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science, University of Warwick
1987-1992 MacArthur Foundation Fellow
1991 Elected Foreign Member, Accademia Nazionale dei Licei, Rome
1995 Elected Honorary Member, London Mathematical Society

Research interests:

1959-1982

Algebraic Geometry, specifically the classification and moduli spaces of curves, surfaces and abelian varieties.

1983-present

Theory of vision, specifically the statistics of visual signals, algorithms in computer vision and issues of neural computation, human/animal vision.

various

Pedagogical projects, e.g. elementary book on the computation of limit sets of Kleinian groups, multi-variable calculus with Calculus Consortium based at Harvard.

Selected Publications:

1. Geometric Invariant Theory,
   Springer-Verlag, 1965; 2nd enlarged edition, (with J. Fogarty), 1982; 3rd enlarged edition, (with F. Kirwan and J. Fogarty), 1994.
2. On the Equations Defining Abelian Varieties I, II, III,
   Inv. Math., vol. 1, 1966, and vol. 3, 1967.
3. Enriques' Classification of Surfaces in Char. p, I,
   in Global Analysis, Spencer and Iyanaga editors, U. of Tokyo Press, 1969; II and III (with E. Bombieri),
   in Complex Analysis and Algebraic Geometry, Baily and Shioda editors, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1977, and
   Invent. Math., 1976, 35.
4. The Irreducibility of the Space of Curves of Given Genus (with P. Deligne),
   Publ. Math. de l'I.H.E.S., 1969, vol. 36.
5. Abelian Varieties,
   Oxford University Press, 1st edition 1970, 2nd edition 1974.
6. The Structure of the Moduli Spaces of Curves and Abelian Varieties,
   Congress Int. du Math., Nice, 1970.
7. Algebraic Geometry I: Complex Projective Varieties,
   Springer-Verlag, New York, 1976.
8. Tata Lectures on Theta (with C. Musili, M. Nori, P. Norman, E. Previato and M. Stillman),
   Birkhauser-Boston, Part I, 1982, Part II, 1983, Part III, 1991.
9. On the Kodaira Dimension of the Moduli Space of Curves (with J. Harris),
   Inv. Math., 1982.
10. Optimal Approximations of Piecewise Smooth Functions and Associated Variational Problems (with J. Shah),
    Comm. in Pure and Appl. Math., 1989, vol. 42.
11. On the Computational Architecture of the Neocortex, I: The role of the thalamo-cortical loop; II: The role of cortico-cortical loops,
    Biological Cybernetics, 1991, vols. 65, 66.
12. Pattern Theory: a Unifying Perspective,
    in Proceedings 1st European Congress of Mathematics, Paris, 1992; publ. Birkhauser-Boston, 1994.
13. Filtering, Segmentation and Depth, (with M. Nitzberg and T. Shiota),
    Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science vol. 662, 1993.
14. Neuronal Architectures for Pattern-theoretic Problems,
    in Large Scale Neuronal Theories of the Brain, MIT Press, 1994.
15. The Statistical Description of Visual Signals,
    to appear in the Proc. ICIAM, Hamburg, 1995.