Phillip Griffiths

Phillip Augustus Griffiths IV (born October 18, 1938) is an American mathematician, known for his work in the field of geometry, and in particular for the complex manifold approach to algebraic geometry. He is a major developer in particular of the theory of variation of Hodge structure in Hodge theory and moduli theory, which forms part of transcendental algebraic geometry and which also touches upon major and distant areas of differential geometry. He also worked on partial differential equations, coauthored with Shiing-Shen Chern, Robert Bryant and Robert Gardner on exterior differential systems.

Education

Griffiths received his BS from Wake Forest College in 1959. He received his PhD from Princeton University in 1962 after completing a doctoral dissertation, titled "On certain homogeneous complex manifolds", under the supervision of Donald Spencer.

Career

Afterwards, he held positions at University of California, Berkeley (1962–1967) and Princeton University (1967–1972). Griffiths was a professor of mathematics at Harvard University from 1972 to 1983. He was then a Provost and James B. Duke Professor of Mathematics at Duke University from 1983 to 1991. From 1991 to 2003, he was the Director of the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey. He remained as part of the Faculty of Mathematics at the IAS until June 2009, after which he has been emeritus at the IAS. He has published on algebraic geometry, differential geometry, geometric function theory, and the geometry of partial differential equations.