WEIL, ANDRÉ

WEIL, ANDRÉ (1906–1998), U.S. mathematician. Born in Paris, Weil was appointed professor at the Aligarh Muslim University in India at the age of 24. He returned to Europe to join the faculty of science at the University of Strasbourg in 1933. He was a lecturer at Haverford College and Swarthmore College in the U.S. from 1940 to 1942, and in 1945 joined the faculty of philosophy at the University of São Paolo in Brazil as professor of mathematics. He returned to the U.S. in 1947 to join the department of mathematics at the University of Chicago, and from 1958 was at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton until he retired. Weil contributed widely to many branches of mathematics, including the theory of numbers, algebraic geometry, and group theory. Among his books are Foundations of Algebraic Geometry (1946, 1962), Introduction l'étude des variétés kaehlériennes (1958), Adeles and Algebraic Groups (1961), and Basic Number Theory (1967). In 1979 Weil was awarded the Wolf Prize, and the following year the American Mathematical Society awarded him its Steele Prize. In 1994 he received the Kyoto Prize from the Inamori Foundation of Japan. (Maurice Goldsmith)