Shiing-Shen Chern (October 28, 1911-December 3, 2004) was born in Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, China. He received his Bachelor Degree from Nankai University in 1930, Master Degree from Tsinghua University in 1934 and Doctoral Degree from Hamburg University in 1936. After this, he went to Paris to pursue his research career. During the years of 1937-1943, he was a professor at Tsinghua University and Southwest Associated University. From 1943-1946, he was a researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) at Princeton, USA where he achieved great creative advances in the field of Differential Geometry and Topology. In 1946-1948, he began preparations to found the Academia Sinica in Nanjing and he was its deputy director. In 1948, he was elected as an academician of Academia Sinica. From 1949-1960, he assumed the post of professor at Chicago University, and from 1960-1979 at University of California, Berkeley. From 1981-1984, he was the first director of Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI). Since 1972, Mr. Chern had visited and lectured in China many times. In 1985, he founded the Nankai Institute of Mathematics and was its first director. In 2002, he helped to bring about the holding of the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) to Beijing and was elected as the honorary president of the conference. In 2000, the Tianjin People’s Government conferred on him the Perpetual Residence Right. Mr. Chern was an academician of U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and foreign academician and member of many other countries’ Academies of Sciences or Royal Societies, such as China, France, Italy, Russia, Britain, etc. He was awarded many honors, such as the U.S. National Medal of Science, the Wolf Prize from the Israeli government, the Humboldt Prize from Germany, China’s International Scientific and Technological Cooperation Prize, the first Shaw Prize in Mathematics, etc. Due to his outstanding contributions and deep influence in global Differential Geometry community, Mr. Chern is recognized as a “Great Geometer of the Twentieth Century”.
