Tom Bridgeland

Thomas Andrew Bridgeland (born 1973) is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Sheffield. He was a senior research fellow in 2011–2013 at All Souls College, Oxford and, since 2013, remains as a Quondam Fellow. He is most well-known for defining Bridgeland stability conditions on triangulated categories.

Education Bridgeland was educated at Shelley High School at the University of Edinburgh, where he also stayed for a postdoctoral research position.

Research and career Bridgeland's research interest is in algebraic geometry, focusing on properties of derived categories of coherent sheaves on algebraic varieties. His most-cited papers are on stability conditions, on triangulated categories and K3 surfaces; in the first he defines the idea of a stability condition on a triangulated category, and demonstrates that the set of all stability conditions on a fixed category form a manifold, whilst in the second he describes one connected component of the space of stability conditions on the bounded derived category of coherent sheaves on a complex algebraic K3 surface.

Bridgeland's work helped to establish the coherent derived category as a key invariant of algebraic varieties and stimulated world-wide enthusiasm for what had previously been a technical backwater.

Awards and honours Bridgeland won the Berwick Prize in 2003, the Adams Prize in 2007 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2014. He was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians, Madrid in 2006.