| Tom Bridgeland | |
| Birth Name: | Thomas Andrew Bridgeland |
| Education: | Shelley High School |
| Thesis Title: | Fourier-Mukai transforms for surfaces and moduli spaces of stable sheaves |
| Thesis Url: | http://hdl.handle.net/1842/12070 |
| Thesis Year: | 2002 |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Antony Maciocia |
Thomas Andrew Bridgeland [1] (born 1973) is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Sheffield.[2] [3] 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.
Bridgeland was educated at Shelley High School[3] in Huddersfield and Christ's College, Cambridge, where he studied the Mathematical Tripos in the University of Cambridge, graduating with a first class degree in mathematics in 1994 and a distinction in Part III the following year. He completed his PhD[4] at the University of Edinburgh, where he also stayed for a postdoctoral research position.
Bridgeland's research interest is in algebraic geometry, focusing on properties of derived categories of coherent sheaves on algebraic varieties.[5] [6] His most-cited papers are on stability conditions, on triangulated categories[7] and K3 surfaces;[8] 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.[1] His results on Fourier–Mukai transforms solve many problems within algebraic geometry, and have been influential in homological and commutative algebra, the theory of moduli spaces, representation theory and combinatorics.[1] Bridgeland's 2002 Annals paper introduced spaces of stability conditions on triangulated categories, replacing the traditional rational slope of moduli problems by a complex phase. This far-reaching innovation gives a rigorous mathematical language for describing D-branes and creates a new area of deep interaction between theoretical physics and algebraic geometry. It has been a central component of subsequent work on homological mirror symmetry.[1]
Bridgeland's research has been funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).[9]
Bridgeland won the Berwick Prize in 2003, the Adams Prize in 2007 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2014.[1] He was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians, Madrid in 2006.