Prof. Toshiyuki Kobayashi
On April 28, 2014, the Japanese government announced this spring’s recipients of the Medal of Honor. Prof. Toshiyuki Kobayashi was selected as one of the 23 recipients of the Medal with Purple Ribbon. He is a professor at the Graduate School of Mathematical Sciences, the University of Tokyo, and a principal investigator at Kavli IPMU.
The Medal with Purple Ribbon is awarded to people who have made outstanding contributions to invention, improvement, and creation in academic fields and art. The recipients are selected by the Japanese government twice a year, in spring and autumn.
Prof. Toshiyuki Kobayashi is a leading mathematician in Lie Groups and Representation Theory. He has opened up several new areas of mathematics through his original theories, ranging over algebra to geometry and analysis.
The key word of his research is “symmetry.” His influential achievements include:
1.Pioneering the theory of “discontinuous groups for homogeneous spaces beyond Riemannian geometry.”
2.Substantial breakthrough in the theory of “branching laws of infinite-dimensional representations,” particularly, creating the theory of “discretely decomposable restrictions.”
3.Pioneering work on the “global analysis arising from minimal representations.”
4.Original theory of “visible action on complex manifolds” towards a unified theory of multiplicity-free representations.
Kobayashi has been honored previously with the Spring Prize of Mathematical Society of Japan (1999), being the invited speaker of International Congress of Mathematicians at Beijing (2002), the Osaka Science Prize (2006), the JSPS Prize (2007), the Sackler Distinguished Lecturer in Israel (2007), the Humboldt Research Award in Germany (2008), and the Inoue Prize for Science (2011).
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