MOTW - Robert Bryant

Mathematician of the week is Robert Bryant.

Bryant grew up in a farming family in Harnett County and was a first-generation college student.[3] He obtained a bachelor's degree at North Caroline State University at Raleigh in 1974 and a PhD at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1979. His thesis was entitled "Some Aspects of the Local and Global Theory of Pfaffian Systems" .

He worked at Rice University for seven years, as assistant professor (1979–1981), associate professor (1981–1982) and full professor (1982–1986). He then moved to Duke University, where he worked for twenty years as J. M. Kreps Professor.

Between 2007 and 2013 he worked as full professor at University of California, Berkeley, where he served as the director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI).[5] In 2013 he returned to Duke University as Phillip Griffiths Professor of Mathematics.

Bryant was awarded in 1982 a Sloan Research Fellowship.[6] In 1986 he was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Berkeley.[7]