Ky Fan

Ky Fan (樊𰋀, , September 19, 1914 – March 22, 2010) was a Chinese-American mathematician widely regarded as one of the most influential mathematicians from China and one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century. Fan's mathematical achievements were unusually versatile and covered numerous areas of mathematics, including both linear and nonlinear analysis, from finite to infinite dimensions, and extends from pure to applied mathematics. He made fundamental contributions in nonlinear analysis, convex analysis and inequalities, fixed point theory, operator and matrix theory, linear and nonlinear programming, complex analysis, topology, and topological groups.

Fan's mathematical research is usually concerned with the foundation and central issues of a field or direction where many of his achievements and results have become classics and found wide applications in many fields, in particular in mathematical economics. For instance, Fan's work in fixed point theory, in addition to influencing nonlinear functional analysis, has found wide applications in mathematical economics and game theory, potential theory, calculus of variations, and differential equations. The basic theorem of the mathematical economics theory of Gérard Debreu, winner of the 1983 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, directly derives from a minimax principle of Fan.

Fan was a doctoral student and collaborator of René Maurice Fréchet at the University of Paris. He was also influenced by John von Neumann and Hermann Weyl. From 1945 to 1947, Fan was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton,New Jersey. Fan was elected to the Academia Sinica in 1964 and served as the director of the Institute of Mathematics of Academia Sinica in Taiwan from 1978 to 1984. In 1985, an international mathematical conference was held at UC Santa Barbara to celebrate the retirement of Fan. Many mathematicians from all over the world traveled to Santa Barbara to participate. Mathematical papers presented at the conference were later published in "Nonlinear and Convex Analysis: Proceedings in Honor of Ky Fan". An entire volume of the mathematical journal "Topological Methods in Nonlinear Analysis" was dedicated to Dr. Fan on the occasion of his 80th birthday. Provided by Wikipedia