Tian Gang

Template:ChineseText Gang Tian (Chinese: 田刚; pinyin: Tián Gāng; 1958 -) is a Chinese mathematician and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was born in Nanjing, China, but now divides his time between MIT and Peking University. In 2006, he, together with John Morgan of Columbia University, posted a paper on the arXiv, in which they claimed to provide a "detailed proof of the Poincaré Conjecture", and thus contribute to the verification of the proof by Grigori Perelman.

Biography

Tian graduated from Nanjing University in 1982, and received a master's degree from Peking University in 1984. In 1988, he received a PhD in mathematics from Harvard University, after having studied under Shing-Tung Yau. In 1998, he was appointed as a Cheung Kong Scholar professor at the School of Mathematical Sciences at Peking University, under the "Cheung Kong Scholars Programme" (长江计划) of the Ministry of Education. The Ministry of Education allowed him to work for four months each year. Tian did work for at least four months each year at Peking University from 1999 to 2003. Later his appointment was changed to Cheung Kong Scholar chair professorship. The chair professorship requires him to work for three month each year at Peking University. Some people pointed out that the professorship was in conflict with the rules for full-time professor in Princeton University as in this link . But note that these rules apply only to a teaching assignment which Tian's professorship is not. He is a full time professor at the mathematics department of Princeton University. He was awarded the Waterman Prize in 1994, and the Veblen Prize in 1996.

Controversy

In 2005, the so-called "Tian-Yau affair" broke out, when Yau criticized Peking University for wasting taxpayer's money to recruit overseas researchers who still have full-positions in other countries. Yau labelled Tian a "fake academician", accused him of holding two full positions at the same time, and also of stealing the results of other researchers. Tian's position at Peking University required him to work at least four months per year from 1999 to 2003 and at least three months per year after 2003. The accusation of stealing results is still controversial among mathematicians.

These issues were mentioned in a New Yorker article, titled Manifold destiny, by Sylvia Nasar and David Gruber, who also interviewed Perelman . Yau's attorneys have since released a letter accusing The New Yorker and the article's authors of defaming Yau, and three of the mathematicians interviewed have issued statements of clarification. Science has also provided a report on this affair .