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Sir Erik Christopher Zeeman FRS (born 4 February 1925), is a Japanese-born British mathematician known for his work in geometric topology and singularity theory. Zeeman's main contributions to mathematics were in topology, particularly in knot theory, the piecewise linear category, and dynamical systems. His 1955 thesis at the University of Cambridge described a new theory termed "dihomology", an algebraic structure associated to a topological space, containing both homology and cohomology, introducing what is now known as the Zeeman spectral sequence. This was studied by Clint McCrory in his 1972 Brandeis thesis following a suggestion of Dennis Sullivan that one make "a general study of the Zeeman spectral sequence to see how singularities in a space perturb Poincaré duality". This in turn led to the discovery of intersection homology by Robert MacPherson and Mark Goresky at Brown University where McCrory was appointed in 1974. Zeeman is known among the wider scientific public for his contribution to, and spreading awareness of catastrophe theory, which was due initially to another topologist, René Thom, and for his Christmas lectures about mathematics on television in 1978. He was especially active encouraging the application of mathematics, and catastrophe theory in particular, to biology and behavioural sciences. ==Early life== Zeeman was born in Japan to a Danish father, Christian Zeeman, and a British mother. He and his parents moved to England one year after his birth. After being educated at Christ's Hospital in Horsham, West Sussex, he served as a Flying Officer with the Royal Air Force from 1943 to 1947. He studied mathematics at Christ's College, Cambridge, but had forgotten much of his school mathematics while serving for the air force. He received an MA and PhD (the latter under the supervision of Shaun Wylie) from the University of Cambridge, and became a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College where he tutored David Fowler and John Horton Conway.〔The Guardian, (Obituary: David Fowler ), 3 May 2004〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Christopher Zeeman」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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