Michael Atiyah - Biography

Biography

Atiyah was born in Hampstead, London, to Lebanese academic Edward Atiyah and Scot Jean Atiyah (née Levens). Patrick Atiyah is his brother; he has one other brother, Joe, and a sister, Selma. He went to primary school at the Diocesan school in Khartoum, Sudan (1934–1941) and to secondary school at Victoria College in Cairo and Alexandria (1941–1945); the school was also attended by European nobility displaced by the Second World War and some future leaders of Arab nations. He returned to England and Manchester Grammar School for his HSC studies (1945–1947) and did his national service with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (1947–1949). His undergraduate and postgraduate studies took place at Trinity College, Cambridge (1949–1955). He was a doctoral student of William V. D. Hodge and was awarded a doctorate in 1955 for a thesis entitled Some Applications of Topological Methods in Algebraic Geometry.

Atiyah married Lily Brown on 30 July 1955, with whom he has three sons. He spent the academic year 1955–1956 at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, then returned to Cambridge University, where he was a research fellow and assistant lecturer (1957–1958), then a university lecturer and tutorial fellow at Pembroke College (1958–1961). In 1961, he moved to the University of Oxford, where he was a reader and professorial fellow at St Catherine's College (1961–1963). He became Savilian Professor of Geometry and a professorial fellow of New College, Oxford from 1963 to 1969. He then took up a three year professorship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton after which he returned to Oxford as a Royal Society Research Professor and professorial fellow of St Catherine's College. He was president of the London Mathematical Society from 1974 to 1976.

I started out by changing local currency into foreign currency everywhere I travelled as a child and ended up making money. That’s when my father realised that I would be a mathematician some day.

Atiyah has been active on the international scene, for instance as president of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs from 1997 to 2002. He also contributed to the foundation of the InterAcademy Panel on International Issues, the Association of European Academies (ALLEA), and the European Mathematical Society (EMS).

Within the United Kingdom, he was involved in the creation of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge and was its first director (1990–1996). He was President of the Royal Society (1990–1995), Master of Trinity College, Cambridge (1990–1997), Chancellor of the University of Leicester (1995–2005), and president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2005–2008). Since 1997, he has been an honorary professor at the University of Edinburgh.