Simon Donaldson

Simon Donaldson gained a BA from Cambridge in 1979. In 1980 he began graduate work in Oxford, supervised by Nigel Hitchin and Sir Michael Atiyah. His PhD thesis studied mathematical aspects of Yang-Mills theory. In 1986, aged 29, he was awarded a Fields Medal and was elected to the Royal Society. He was Wallis Professor of Mathematics in Oxford between 1985 and 1998 when he moved to Imperial College London. Most of his work since has been on the interface between differential geometry and...See more

Simon Donaldson gained a BA from Cambridge in 1979. In 1980 he began graduate work in Oxford, supervised by Nigel Hitchin and Sir Michael Atiyah. His PhD thesis studied mathematical aspects of Yang-Mills theory. In 1986, aged 29, he was awarded a Fields Medal and was elected to the Royal Society. He was Wallis Professor of Mathematics in Oxford between 1985 and 1998 when he moved to Imperial College London. Most of his work since has been on the interface between differential geometry and complex algebraic geometry. The recipient of numerous awards, including the Shaw Prize in 2009 with Clifford Taubes, he is also a Foreign Member of the US, French & Swedish academies. Donaldson has supervised more than 40 doctoral students, many of whom have gone on to become leading figures in research. See less