- Ian G. Macdonald
Ian G. Macdonald (born 1928 in
London ,England ) is a British mathematician known for his contributions tosymmetric function s,special function s,Lie algebra theory and other aspects ofalgebraic combinatorics (see alsocombinatorics ).He was educated at
Winchester College andTrinity College, Cambridge , graduating in 1952. He then spent five years as acivil servant . He was offered a position atManchester University in 1957 byMax Newman , on the basis of work he had done while outside academia. In 1960 he moved to theUniversity of Exeter , and in 1963 became a Fellow ofMagdalen College, Oxford . He became Fielden Professor at Manchester in 1972, and professor at Queen Mary and Westfield College, London in 1976.He worked on
symmetric products of algebraic curves ,Jordan algebra s,representation theory of groups overlocal field s. In 1972 he proved theMacdonald identities , after a pattern known toFreeman Dyson . His 1979 book "Symmetric Functions and Hall Polynomials" has become a classic. Symmetric functions are an old theory, part of thetheory of equations , to which bothK-theory andrepresentation theory lead. His was the first text to integrate much classical theory, such asHall polynomial s,Schur function s, theLittlewood-Richardson rule , with theabstract algebra approach. It was both an expository work and, in part, a research monograph, and had a major impact in the field. TheMacdonald polynomial s are now named for him. TheMacdonald conjectures from 1982 also proved most influential.elected publications
*Macdonald, I. G. "Affine Hecke algebras and orthogonal polynomials." Cambridge Tracts in Mathematics, 157. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003. x+175 pp. ISBN 0-521-82472-9 MathSciNet|id=2005b:33021
*Macdonald, I. G. "Symmetric functions and Hall polynomials." Second edition. Oxford Mathematical Monographs. Oxford Science Publications. The Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, New York, 1995. x+475 pp. ISBN 0-19-853489-2 MathSciNet|id=96h:05207
*Macdonald, I. G. "Symmetric functions and orthogonal polynomials." Dean Jacqueline B. Lewis Memorial Lectures presented at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ. University Lecture Series, 12. American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI, 1998. xvi+53 pp. ISBN 0-8218-0770-6 MathSciNet|id=99f:05116External links
*MathGenealogy |id=87545
* [http://www.maths.leeds.ac.uk/~vadim/Morris3.pdf Biographical notice]
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