Heisuke Hironaka
Heisuke Hironaka (広中平祐) (born
1931) is celebrated for proving in
1964 that singularities of algebraic varieties admit resolutions in characteristic zero. This means that any
projective variety can be replaced by a similar one (i.e. birationally equivalent) which has no singularities. For this theorem he won the
Fields Medal in 1970. He was for many years a professor of mathematics at
Harvard but currently lives in
Japan where he is greatly respected and influential. He has been active in raising funds for causes such as mathematical education.
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