Jerzy Weyman

Jerzy Maria Weyman (Polish pronunciation: [ˈjɛʐɨ ˈveyman]; born April 29, 1955) is a Polish-American mathematician whose field is algebra. With over four decades of professional expertise, he has authored more than 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals and has written two books.

Biography Weyman was born on April 29, 1955, in Toruń, Poland, into a family with a rich history, including notable figures from Polish history and literature. His maternal great-great-grandfather, Count Aleksander Fredro, was a poet and playwright from the era of Polish Romanticism, while his great-grandfather, Piotr Szembek, served as a military general in the 19th century. Weyman's father's family immigrated to Poland from Alsace in the 19th century, where the surname Weyman is common. Both of Weyman's parents were doctors.

His interest in mathematics began in the 4th grade at IV LO [High School in Toruń, where a teacher inspired him. Enrolling in the Faculty of Mathematics at Nicolaus Copernicus University of Toruń in 1973, Weyman developed a passion for algebra, particularly influenced by his mentor Tadeusz Józefiak. The same year, Weyman won a bronze medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad in Moscow.

In 1977, Weyman defended his master's thesis on ideals generated by monomials. He became an assistant professor at the Mathematical Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He later pursued graduate studies at Brandeis University in the US, completing his Ph.D. in 1980 on free resolutions of determinantal ideals. Weyman returned to Poland in the early 1980s, continuing his role at the Mathematical Institute and collaborating on commutative algebra problems. In 1982, he received the Award of the Polish Mathematical Society for Young Mathematicians, and in 1984, he became a laureate of the Kazimierz Kuratowski Prize along with Piotr Pragacz.

In 1985, Weyman permanently moved to the United States, becoming an assistant professor at Northeastern University of Boston. He rose to the rank of full professor in 1995. His academic journey involved collaborations with renowned mathematicians, such as David Buchsbaum, David Eisenbud, Harm Derksen, Kiyoshi Igusa, Marc Levine, Joseph Landsberg, Gordana Todorov and Andrei Zelevinsky. In 2003, he published his first book, "Cohomology of Vector Bundles and Syzygies." He received the Humboldt Research Award in 2012.

In 2013, Weyman joined the University of Connecticut as the Stuart and Joan Sidney Professor of Mathematics. He contributed to the Commutative Algebra Special Year at MSRI and received the title of professor in Poland. In 2015, he was awarded the Wacław Sierpiński Medal and Lecture. In 2017, Weyman co-authored the book "Introduction to Quiver Representations." After 34 years in the U.S., he returned to Poland in 2019, joining Jagiellonian University. In 2021, he received the Stefan Banach Prize from the Polish Mathematical Society for outstanding achievements in mathematical sciences. Weyman continues his work at Jagiellonian University, leading various research projects, most notably implementing a research grant focused on Applications of Lie algebras to Commutative Algebra, such as Research in commutative algebra and representation theory and Structure of equivariant D-modules.

Selected research

Books

Awards and recognition

Research prizes J. Wacławek Prize of Institute of Mathematics of Polish Academy of Sciences for an outstanding Ph.D. thesis, 1981 Prize of Polish Mathematical Society for young mathematicians, for papers published in years 1979-1982, 1982 Prize of the Polish Mathematical Society for young mathematicians, 1982 M. Wacławek Prize of the Institute of Polish Academy of Sciences, 1982 Kuratowski Prize of Polish Mathematical Society (joint with Piotr Pragacz), 1983 Humboldt Forschungspreis, March 2012 Simons Research Professor, MSRI, January–May, 2013 Wacław Sierpiński Medal and Lecture, Polish Mathematical Society and Warsaw University, 2015 Banach Prize of Polish Mathematical Society for scientific achievement, 2021