The Chern Lectures


The Shiing-Shen Chern Chair in Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, was established by a donation by Dr Robert G Uomini, a 1976 graduate from UC Berkeley, and his wife Louise B Bidwell in honour of Shiing-Shen Chern. Robert Uomini won $22 million on the 1995 California lottery and he used part of his winnings to fund the Shiing-Shen Chern Chair. Uomini graduated with a B.A. in 1969. He said:-
I loved Chern's lectures, by the end of the class I felt I wanted to become a differential geometer.
Funds from the endowment are used to support one or more distinguished visiting mathematicians each year as well as teaching and research activities related to the visitors. The visitors are referred to as 'The Shiing-Shen Chern Visiting Professors'.

The Shiing-Shen Chern Visiting Professors

1996 Sir Michael Atiyah
1997 Richard Stanley
1998 Friedrich Hirzebruch
1999 Michael Artin, Yuri Manin
2000 Don Zagier
2001 Joseph Bernstein, Peter Lax, Bertram Kostant
2005 Terence Tao
2007 Vladimir Igorevich Arnold
2008 Dennis Sullivan
2009 Richard Taylor
2010 Peter S Ozsvath
2011 Andrei Okounkov
2012 Jean Bourgain
2013 Nigel Hitchin, Stanislav Smirnov
2014 Ngô Bảo Châu
2015-16 Alex Eskin
2016-17 Sergiu Klainerman
2017-18 Martin Hairer
2018-19 Assaf Naor
2022-23 Peter Sarnak
2022-23 Yakov Eliashberg
2023-24 Bernd Ulrich