Heisuke Hironaka (広中 平祐 Hironaka Heisuke, born April 9, 1931) is a Japanese mathematician. He was a student of Oscar Zariski together with other famous mathematicians like David Mumford and Michael Artin. April 9 is the 99th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (100th in leap years). ... 1931 is a common year starting on Thursday. ... A mathematician is a person whose area of study and research is mathematics. ... Oscar Zariski was one of the most influential mathematicians working in the field of algebraic geometry in the twentieth century. ... David Bryant Mumford (born 11 June 1937) is an American mathematician known for distinguished work in algebraic geometry, and then for research into vision and pattern theory. ... Michael Artin is an American mathematician, known for his contributions to algebraic geometry. ...

He is celebrated for proving in 1964 that singularities of algebraic varieties admit resolutions in characteristic zero. This means that any projective variety can be replaced by a similar one (i.e. birationally equivalent) which has no singularities. For this theorem he won the Fields Medal in 1970. He was the second Japanese mathematician who won this prize. The first one was Kunihiko Kodaira in 1950's. Shigefumi Mori became the third Japanese Fields medalist in 1990. All three of them were studying algebraic geometry. 1964 was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... In mathematics, a singular point of an algebraic variety V is a point P that is special (so, singular), in the geometric sense that V is not locally flat there. ... This article is about algebraic varieties. ... The Fields Medal is a prize awarded to up to four mathematicians (not over forty years of age) at each International Congress of International Mathematical Union, since 1936 and regularly since 1948 at the initiative of the Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields. ... 1970 was a common year starting on Thursday. ... Kunihiko Kodaira (小平 邦彦 Kodaira Kunihiko, 16 March 1915 – 26 July 1997) was a Japanese mathematician known for distinguished work in algebraic geometry and the theory of complex manifolds; and as the founder of the Japanese school of algebraic geometers. ... Shigefumi Mori (森 重文 Mori Shigefumi, born February 23, 1951) is a Japanese mathematician, known for his work in algebraic geometry, particularly in relation to the classification of threefolds, which is nowadays called as the Mori program among some mathematicians specialized in algebraic geometry. ... 1990 is a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Algebraic geometry is a branch of mathematics which, as the name suggests, combines abstract algebra, especially commutative algebra, with geometry. ...

He was for many years a professor of mathematics at Harvard but currently lives in Japan where he is greatly respected and influential. He has been active in raising funds for causes such as mathematical education. Harvard, see Harvard (disambiguation) Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and a member of the Ivy League. ...

Trivia: He once wrote a paper under a pseudonym named after Kobayashi Issa, a famous Japanese haiku poet. The result is known as Issa's theorem in complex function theory. Kobayashi Issa (小林一茶 Kobayashi Issa) (June 15, 1763 - January 5, 1828) was a Japanese haiku poet. ...

External links:

• Hironaka biography