History
Professor Hidehiko Yamabe (1924-1960) came to Minnesota from IAS as an assistant professor in 1956. During his four years here he worked on a number of diverse topics in geometry and analysis: he initiated the problem of whether, given a Riemannian metric on a smooth compact manifold of dimension > 2, there exists a conformally equivalent metric of constant scalar curvature; he made contributions to Hilbert's 5th problem and various diffusion problems. Yamabe died in 1960, at age 37, of a massive stroke, said to have been brought on by war injuries as a civilian. This tragedy happened soon after he was appointed a full professor at Northwestern University. Yamabe's widow and two young daughters were left virtually penniless as Yamabe no longer had a pension from Minnesota and hadn't yet gained one from Northwestern. Faculty of both Northwestern and Minnesota raised a small amount of money to help the family, who then moved back to Japan.
The Yamabe Memorial Lecture was initiated jointly with Northwestern around 1962. It featured a lecture by a prominent mathematician each year, alternating between Northwestern (odd-numbered years) and Minnesota (even-numbered years). Initially supported by a small subsidy from Yamabe’s widow, this donation was later augmented by significant faculty contributions in Minnesota, resulting in the present endowment known as the Yamabe Fund. The distinguished speakers brought in year after year established the Lectures as a significant event in the mathematical calendar, particularly in the Midwest.
Notable speakers before 2002 include Neil Trudinger, Eugenio Calabi, Rick Schoen, Shizuo Kakutani, Craig Evans, Walter Rudin, Robert Hardt, Katsumi Nomizu, Fred Gehring, Richard Hamilton, Peter Sarnak, Jeff Cheeger, Shing-Tung Yau, Terence Tao, Igor Rodnianski, Luis Caffarelli, Tai-Ping Liu, Sergiu Klainerman, and Simon Brendle. In 2002, the Yamabe Memorial Lecture evolved into the Yamabe Memorial Symposium, a biannual conference featuring eight speakers over 2.5 days, supported by the Yamabe Fund and the NSF, enhancing participation and expanding its impact. Detailed information about past Yamabe Memorial Symposia can be found as follows:
Previous Yamabe Symposium Details
