Word: botts
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...geometric spaces and their properties that are preserved under bending. An important algebraic tool in topology is the homotopy group, which is used to classify different types of holes in spaces and which are difficult to compute, according to Daniel K. Biss '98, a student whose topology senior thesis Bott is advising...
...Bott's most famous contribution to mathematics is the Bott Periodicity Theorem, which he discovered in 1956. It was the first, and in a sense the only explanation of the homotopy groups of an important space, in this case, of all-invertiable matrices. He also found a periodic structure in these homotopy groups...
...Bott accepted a position in the Harvard Mathematics Department, where he remains to this day. He has taught classes on calculus, linear algebra and group theory. His most recent teaching subjects include introductory topology and differential geometry...
Looking back at his life at Harvard, Bott decries the increasing bureaucracy of large undergraduate mathematical classes, and urges students to be lively and aggressive in class...
...Much of Bott's own unorthodox youth was spent avoiding educational systems that emphasized rote learning. Born in Budapest on September 24, 1923, to a Jewish mother and a Catholic father, he lived the first 16 years of his life in the Hungarian part of Slovakia. His parents divorced soon after he was born, but Bott nonetheless led a childhood of affluence, since his new stepfather was a high-ranking manager in a sugar factory...