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Christopher Zeeman Scientist

Sir Erik Christopher Zeeman FRS (born 4 February 1925), is a Japanese-born British mathematician known for his work in geometric topology and singularity theory. Zeeman's main contributions to mathematics were in topology, particularly in knot theory, the piecewise linear category, and dynamical systems.His 1955 thesis at the University of Cambridge described a new theory termed "dihomology", an algebraic structure associated to a topological space, containing both homology and cohomology, introducing what is now known as the Zeeman spectral sequence. This was studied by Clint McCrory in his 1972 Brandeis thesis following a suggestion of Dennis Sullivan that one make "a general study of the Zeeman spectral sequence to see how singularities in a space perturb Poincaré duality". This in turn led to the discovery of intersection homology by Robert MacPherson and Mark Goresky at Brown University where McCrory was appointed in 1974. Zeeman is known among the wider scientific public for his contribution to, and spreading awareness of catastrophe theory, which was due initially to another topologist, René Thom, and for his Christmas lectures about mathematics on television in 1978. He was especially active encouraging the application of mathematics, and catastrophe theory in particular, to biology and behavioural sciences.

Personal facts

Birth date	February 04, 1925
Birth place	Japan
Residence	United Kingdom
Education	England University of Cambridge
Known for	Catastrophe theory Geometric topology Singularity theory

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