Friedrich Hirzebruch

Friedrich Ernst Peter Hirzebruch was a German mathematician, born in Hamm, Westphalia, in 1927, working in topology, complex manifolds and algebraic geometry and a leading figure of his generation, described as the most important mathematician in Germany of the postwar period. He studied at the University of Münster, held a position at Erlangen and spent 1952 to 1954 at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. After a year at Princeton University he became a professor at the University of Bonn, where he remained, and in 1981 he became director of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics. He was a Foreign Member of the Royal Society.