Jerry Kazdan
Jerry Lawrence Kazdan (born 31 October 1937 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American mathematician noted for his work in differential geometry and the study of partial differential equations. His contributions include the Berger–Kazdan comparison theorem, which was a key step in the proof of the Blaschke conjecture and the classification of Wiedersehen manifolds. His best-known work, done in collaboration with Frank Warner, dealt with the problem of prescribing the scalar curvature of a Riemannian metric. Biography

Kazdan received his bachelor's degree in 1959 from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and his master's degree in 1961 from NYU. He obtained his PhD in 1963 from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University; his thesis was entitled A Boundary Value Problem Arising in the Theory of Univalent Functions and was supervised by Paul Garabedian. He then took a position as a Benjamin Peirce Instructor at Harvard University. Since 1966, he has been a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania. Dennis DeTurck was a student of his. Honours
In 1999 he received the Lester Randolph Ford Award for his expository article Solving equations, an elegant legacy. In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. Major publications
 DeTurck, Dennis M.; Kazdan, Jerry L. Some regularity theorems in Riemannian geometry. Ann. Sci. École Norm. Sup. (4) 14 (1981), no. 3, 249–260. Kazdan, Jerry L.; Warner, F.W. Curvature functions for compact 2-manifolds. Ann. of Math. (2) 99 (1974), 14–47. Kazdan, Jerry L.; Warner, F.W. Remarks on some quasilinear elliptic equations. Comm. Pure Appl. Math. 28 (1975), no. 5, 567–597. Kazdan, Jerry L.; Warner, F.W. Scalar curvature and conformal deformation of Riemannian structure. Journal of Differential Geometry 10 (1975), 113–134. Kazdan, Jerry L.; Warner, F.W. Existence and conformal deformation of metrics with prescribed Gaussian and scalar curvatures. Ann. of Math. (2) 101 (1975), 317–331. Books
 Lectures on Complex Numbers and Infinite Series (1966)
 Calculus Two: Linear and Nonlinear Functions (1971, with Francis J. Flanigan)
 Intermediate Calculus And Linear Algebra (1975)
 Prescribing the Curvature of a Riemannian Manifold (1985)

See also
 Prescribed scalar curvature problem

References

External links
Jerry Kazdan's homepage
 
 Brief biography on the occasion of receiving the Lester R. Ford award

20th-century American mathematicians
21st-century American  mathematicians
Harvard University Department of Mathematics faculty
Harvard University faculty
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences alumni
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute alumni
University of Pennsylvania faculty
Mathematicians at the University of Pennsylvania
Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
Living people
1937 births
American textbook writers
Differential geometers