George Kempf

George Rushing Kempf (Globe, Arizona, August 12, 1944 – Lawrence, Kansas, July 16, 2002) was a mathematician who worked on algebraic geometry, who proved the Riemann–Kempf singularity theorem, the Kempf–Ness theorem, the Kempf vanishing theorem, and who introduced Kempf varieties.

George Rushing Kempf
Born(1944-08-12)12 August 1944
Globe, Arizona, US
Died16 July 2002(2002-07-16) (aged 57)
Lawrence, Kansas, US
NationalityAmerican
Alma materJohns Hopkins University
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Columbia University
Scientific career
FieldsMathematician
InstitutionsJohns Hopkins University
Doctoral advisorSteven Kleiman

Mumford on Kempf

'I met George in 1970 when he burst on the algebraic geometry scene with a spectacular PhD thesis. His thesis gave a wonderful analysis of the singularities of the subvarieties $W_r$ of the Jacobian of a curve obtained by adding the curve to itself $r$ times inside its Jacobian. This was one of the major themes that he pursued throughout his career: understanding the interaction of a curve with its Jacobian and especially to the map from the $r$-fold symmetric product of the curve to the Jacobian. In his thesis he gave a determinantal representation both of $W_r$ and of its tangent cone at all its singular points, which gives you a complete understanding of the nature of these singularities' - D. Mumford

'One of the things that distinguished his work was the total mastery with which he used higher cohomology. A paper which, I believe, every new student of algebraic geometry should read, is his elementary proof of the Riemann-Roch theorem on curves: “Algebraic Curves” in Crelle, 1977. That such an old result could be treated with new insight was the work of a master.' - D. Mumford

gollark: I have done *at least* five minutes of work to make it quite fast.
gollark: https://osmarks.tk/
gollark: osmarks.tk?
gollark: That's applications' fault.
gollark: The web is actually not too slow thanks to tons of optimization work, WASM, and very fast JITs.

References
  • Mumford, David (2002), "In memoriam: George R. Kempf 1944–2002" (PDF), American Journal of Mathematics, 124 (6): iii–iv, doi:10.1353/ajm.2002.0040, ISSN 0002-9327, MR 1939780
  • George Kempf at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
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