by Eriko Shinozaki
I first met Professor Kobayashi twenty years ago, during my junior year of college, when he was a visiting professor at International Christian University in Tokyo, Japan. I had always wanted to study mathematics at university and had started as a math major at ICU. I began to doubt this decision, however, because out of all the math courses offered at ICU at that time none felt comfortable.
High school was where I always felt confident when studying mathematics and always knew what I was doing. I had to choose between geometry, algebra, and analysis after the fall of my junior year, but at that time I never considered geometry as my area of study. I was even thinking about changing to a chemistry major. I took Professor Kobayashi’s class, since it was a required subject, not knowing that it would totally change my life. Thus, in my third year of mathematics studies, I thanked God for giving me this opportunity to meet Professor Kobayashi. I knew he would soon be leaving after the second term (ICU’s academic year is divided into three terms), so I fully focused on geometry, solving everything I could, and visited his office almost every day.
After the end of the term exams, for the first time since high school, I finally achieved a grade at ICU with which I was familiar. When I got my exams back from Professor Kobayashi, he asked me if I was willing to continue in differential geometry. To tell the truth, all I wanted to do was ask him how I could possibly study differential geometry, due to the fact that there was no differential geometry teacher at ICU!
Subsequently, he kindly advised me to continue my differential geometry studies under Ms. Makiko Tanaka (currently a professor at Tokyo Science University), who was at the time helping us, the ICU students, with our calculus recitations. Fortunately for me, she was also a differential geometry major studying under Professor Kobayashi’s colleague, Professor Nagano at Sophia University. Professor Kobayashi also offered to let me continue my differential geometry studies under his guidance, as well as advise me on my senior thesis, which was to be submitted the following year.
During most of my senior year he was at Tokyo University evaluating its mathematical curricula, enabling me to meet with him often on the Hongo campus. I even met him on the day he was returning to Berkeley. We worked on the thesis, then walked to Ueno station together and took the train to Narita as we continued our mathematical discussions on the train, shaking hands and saying good-bye at the airport.
Since that time, for almost twenty years, I continued to meet with Professor Kobayashi each time he visited Japan for meetings, seminars, university evaluations, and special lectures. What we worked on together changed over the years. During my senior year Professor Kobayashi helped me choose a thesis on the topic of conjugate connections, helped me find a theorem and then sent it to the Tokyo Journal of Mathematics under the title “Conjugate connections and moduli spaces of connections.” However, since I decided to work full-time as a mathematics teacher in a Japanese high school rather than pursue graduate studies (finding a job was very competitive in Japan in 1995), it became difficult for me to continue with my research.
One day Dr. Kobayashi asked me if he could give my topic to another of his graduate students and asked me to help him translate and type, using \( \mathrm{\LaTeX} \), his book Differential Geometry of Curves and Surfaces into English instead. I thanked him very much for allowing me the opportunity to continue working in the field of mathematics with him and appreciated his confidence in my translation and understanding of his work. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to complete the translation together, but I plan to continue working on it with Professor Makiko Tanaka.<
