mathematics

Paul Seidel

Paul Seidel is a mathematics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Paul Seidel rather than just read about it. In short: Paul Seidel (born 30 December 1970) is a Swiss-Italian mathematician specializing in homological mirror symmetry. He is a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Key takeaways

Paul Seidel belongs to mathematics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Paul Seidel to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Paul Seidel from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Paul Seidel (born 30 December 1970) is a Swiss-Italian mathematician specializing in homological mirror symmetry. He is a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Career Seidel attended Heidelberg University, where he received his Diplom under supervision of Albrecht Dold in 1994. He then pursued his Ph.D. studies at the University of Oxford under supervision of Simon Donaldson (Thesis: Floer Homology and the Symplectic Isotopy Problem) in 1998. He was a chargé de recherche at the CNRS from 1999 to 2002, a professor at Imperial College London from 2002 to 2003, a professor at the University of Chicago from 2003 to 2007, and then a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2007 onwards.

Awards In 2000, Seidel was awarded the EMS Prize. In 2010, he was awarded the Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry "for his fundamental contributions to symplectic geometry and, in particular, for his development of advanced algebraic methods for computation of symplectic invariants." In 2012, he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society and a Simons Investigator.

Personal life Seidel is married to Ju-Lee Kim, who is also a professor of mathematics at MIT.

Publications Fukaya Categories and Picard-Lefschetz Theory, European Mathematical Society, 2008

References

External links Website at MIT Paul Seidel at the Mathematics Genealogy Project Laudatio from the Veblen Prize, Notices AMS, April 2010 Honors for the EMS Prize 2000

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Paul Seidel

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Paul Seidel claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Paul Seidel before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Paul Seidel ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Paul Seidel

In research: Paul Seidel appears in mathematics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Paul Seidel in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Paul Seidel is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1970 births, 20th-century German mathematicians, 20th-century Swiss mathematicians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Paul Seidel outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “Paul Seidel” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Paul Seidel in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Paul Seidel means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Paul Seidel out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Paul Seidel in simple terms?

Paul Seidel (born 30 December 1970) is a Swiss-Italian mathematician specializing in homological mirror symmetry. He is a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Why does Paul Seidel matter?

Because it connects several mathematics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Paul Seidel?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Paul Seidel.