Graeme Segal

Who is Graeme Segal?

Graeme Bryce Segal FRS is a British mathematician, and professor at the University of Oxford.

Segal was educated at the University of Sydney, where he received his BSc degree in 1961. He went on to receive his D.Phil. in 1967 from St Catherine's College, Oxford; his thesis, written under the supervision of Michael Atiyah, was titled Equivariant K-theory.

His thesis was in the area of equivariant K-theory. The Atiyah–Segal completion theorem in that subject was a major motivation for the Segal conjecture, which he formulated. He has made many other contributions to homotopy theory in the past four decades, including an approach to infinite loop spaces. He was also a pioneer of elliptic cohomology, which is related to his interest in topological quantum field theory.

Segal was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1982 and an Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He was awarded the Sylvester Medal by the Royal Society in 2010.

He was Lowndean Professor of Astronomy and Geometry from 1990 to 1999.

Segal was elected the President of the London Mathematical Society in 2011.