Heisuke Hironaka

Heisuke Hironaka was a Japanese mathematician, born in Yamaguchi on 9 April 1931 and died on 18 March 2026, who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1970 for his contributions to algebraic geometry, in particular the resolution of singularities. He studied physics at Kyoto University, took part in the Akizuki School seminar group led by Yasuo Akizuki, and in 1957 moved to Harvard University as a doctoral student under the direction of Oscar Zariski, receiving his PhD in 1960 for the thesis On the Theory of Birational Blowing-up. Alexander Grothendieck, who visited Harvard from 1958 to 1959, invited him to the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in Paris. He was an associate professor at Brandeis University from 1960 to 1963 and taught at Columbia University from 1964 to 1968.