Taking the Long View: The Life of Shiing-shen Chern examines the life of a remarkable mathematician whose classical Chinese philosophical ideas helped him build bridges between China and the West. Shiing-shen Chern (1911-2004) is one of the fathers of modern differential geometry.

His work at the Institute for Advanced Study and in China during and after World War II led to his teaching at the University of Chicago in 1949. Next came Berkeley, where he created a world-renowned center for geometry, and, in 1981, co-founded the Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute. During the 1980s, he brought talented Chinese scholars to the United States and Europe. By 1986, with Chinese government support, he established a math institute at Nankai University in Tianjin. Today, it is called the Chern Institute of Mathematics. Read More...