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Celebratio Mathematica

Shōshichi Kobayashi

Remembering Shoshichi Kobayashi

by Mei and Yukiko Kobayashi

Shoshi­chi Kobay­ashi was born Janu­ary 4, 1932, dur­ing the Ja­pan­ese New Year’s hol­i­day cel­eb­ra­tions in the sev­enth year of the reign of the Em­per­or Showa.1 Shoshi­chi was the eld­est of five sons born to his par­ents, Yosh­ie and Ky­uzo.

Sev­er­al months after the ar­rival of Shoshi­chi, the fam­ily moved to Tokyo, where busi­ness op­por­tun­it­ies were more prom­ising. With­in a few years, Ky­uzo had saved enough to open his own futon store.

When the war ended, Shoshi­chi’s math teach­er, Mr. Mun­eo Hay­ashi, ad­vised his par­ents to al­low their son to ap­ply for Ichiko (num­ber one high school) in Tokyo. Shoshi­chi passed the en­trance ex­am in his fourth year at middle school.

At the end of his first year in Ichiko, Shoshi­chi took the en­trance ex­am for ad­mis­sion to the Uni­versity of Tokyo. He passed it on his first try and entered the uni­versity after only one year at Ichiko.

At the Uni­versity of Tokyo (Tokyo-daigaku or Todai) Shoshi­chi found that he was among the top stu­dents in math­em­at­ics. At the end of his sopho­more year he de­clared his ma­jor to be math­em­at­ics and re­gistered for a pro­gram to re­ceive high school teach­ing cer­ti­fic­a­tion. At this time he was un­aware that people could make a liv­ing “just do­ing math­em­at­ics.” The situ­ation soon changed.

When Shoshi­chi star­ted look­ing for a ma­jor ad­visor, his as­signed un­der­gradu­ate ad­visor told him about a cha­ris­mat­ic young pro­fess­or named Kent­aro Yano, who would be re­turn­ing from the In­sti­tute for Ad­vanced Study at Prin­ceton the fol­low­ing aca­dem­ic year. Just hear­ing about someone re­turn­ing from Prin­ceton seemed exot­ic and ex­cit­ing to Shoshi­chi. Sure enough, Pro­fess­or Yano lived up to and ex­ceeded all ex­pect­a­tions. Ad­visor and ad­visee made quite an odd but in­sep­ar­able pair. Yano was a vi­va­cious chain smoker who en­joyed drink­ing and club­bing, while Shoshi­chi was a quiet book­ish type, a nonsmoker who drank mod­estly and only dur­ing so­cial oc­ca­sions. Words can­not ex­press the ad­mir­a­tion, love, and re­spect that Shoshi­chi had for his thes­is ad­visor. Their kin­ship las­ted un­til Yano’s death dur­ing the year-end hol­i­day sea­son in 1993. Un­der Yano’s guid­ance Shoshi­chi was bit­ten by the re­search bug.

Soon it be­came clear that post­gradu­ation stud­ies in France would be bet­ter than re­main­ing in Tokyo. Shoshi­chi en­rolled in night classes at Athénée Français to learn French to pre­pare for the ex­am for a fel­low­ship to study abroad. The ef­fort paid off hand­somely. Shoshi­chi won a fully fun­ded fel­low­ship to study at the Uni­versit­ies of Stras­bourg and Par­is for one year (1953–54). He was elated by the news.

The fel­low­ship re­quired re­cip­i­ents to pay for their boat fare and trans­port­a­tion to Par­is. This cost Shoshi­chi’s par­ents nearly a fifth of what they had paid for a house three years be­fore. Costs for room, board, and tu­ition in France plus a small sti­pend would be covered by the French gov­ern­ment. The fare for the re­turn trip at the con­clu­sion of the year was also in­cluded in the pack­age.

The family at Yokohama to wish Shoshichi bon voyage to France, August 20, 1953.
Photo courtesy of the Nomizu family.

On what was the hot­test sum­mer day in Tokyo re­cor­ded at that time, Shoshi­chi boarded a French pas­sen­ger ship with oth­er fel­low­ship re­cip­i­ents and waved to his re­l­at­ives who had trav­elled to the port of Yoko­hama to wish him well dur­ing his year abroad. No one ima­gined that Shoshi­chi’s de­par­ture would be per­man­ent. He would re­turn for his first brief vis­it to Ja­pan in 1965 as a hus­band, fath­er, and vis­it­ing pro­fess­or from the Uni­versity of Cali­for­nia at Berke­ley, cour­tesy of a Sloan Fel­low­ship.

The jour­ney to France was quite an ad­ven­ture. Shortly after the ship passed through the Suez Canal, Shoshi­chi began run­ning a dan­ger­ously high fever and was ad­mit­ted to the hos­pit­al quar­ters on­board. He was only semi­con­scious when the ship ar­rived in France. The first months of his post­gradu­ate ex­per­i­ence were spent in a French hos­pit­al re­cov­er­ing from typhoid.2 The French math­em­at­ic­al com­munity was very friendly. Shoshi­chi at­ten­ded sem­inars or­gan­ized by fam­ous pro­fess­ors.3 He dis­covered that he might be able to make a liv­ing “just do­ing math­em­at­ics.” One day in Par­is he met Kat­sumi Nom­izu, a young Ja­pan­ese math­em­atician who had just fin­ished his Ph.D. un­der Chern at the Uni­versity of Chica­go. Nom­izu sug­ges­ted that Shoshi­chi re­turn to Ja­pan via the United States. He men­tioned two great math­em­aticians from whom Shoshi­chi could learn the art of math­em­at­ics: Chern at Chica­go and Al­lendo­er­fer at the Uni­versity of Wash­ing­ton. Shoshi­chi sent a per­son­al state­ment to­geth­er with re­prints of his re­cent pub­lic­a­tions to these two uni­versit­ies. A few weeks later he re­ceived an ac­cept­ance let­ter from the Uni­versity of Wash­ing­ton stat­ing that all ex­penses would be covered upon ar­rival. From Chica­go he re­ceived a thick en­vel­ope of ap­plic­a­tion forms. His de­cision was not dif­fi­cult. The French au­thor­it­ies agreed to cov­er his boat fare to the United States in lieu of travel costs back to his par­ents’ home in Ja­pan.

Shoshi­chi was over­whelmed by the gen­er­os­ity and kind­ness of the mem­bers of the uni­versity com­munity in Seattle. On his first day at the uni­versity, the de­part­ment chair, Pro­fess­or Carl Barnett Al­lendo­er­fer, made time to greet Shoshi­chi and in­form him of spe­cial ar­range­ments to have his sti­pend paid in ad­vance at the be­gin­ning of each month for just the first year. The ad­min­is­tra­tion had heard from more seni­or for­eign stu­dents of the dif­fi­culties in se­cur­ing a loan after ar­riv­ing with little money. Shoshi­chi took an im­me­di­ate lik­ing to the pro­fess­or. Over the course of a few months he found Al­lendo­er­fer to be a great states­man and schol­ar and was very happy when Al­lendo­er­fer agreed to be his doc­tor­al thes­is ad­visor.

Wedding of Yukiko and Shoshichi.
Photo courtesy of the Nomizu family.

Later that year Shoshi­chi was best man at the wed­ding of his friend Akira Ishi­maru. The bride’s maid of hon­or was Yukiko Ash­iz­a­wa, who was also from Tokyo but from a dif­fer­ent sec­tion of the city. She was on leave from her du­ties as a teach­er at Rikkyo Ele­ment­ary School in Tokyo. Had it not been for the war, it is doubt­ful that Shoshi­chi and Yukiko’s paths would have crossed in Tokyo. They were form­ally en­gaged be­fore he left for the In­sti­tute for Ad­vanced Study in Prin­ceton for his first postdoc in 1956, one year after his ar­rival in the United States. Shoshi­chi re­turned to Seattle the fol­low­ing spring for Yukiko’s gradu­ation and for their wed­ding on May 11, 1957.

After the wed­ding the couple drove to the Uni­versity of Chica­go, which had in­dis­put­ably be­come a lead­ing in­ter­na­tion­al cen­ter of geo­met­ric re­search un­der the lead­er­ship of Shi­ing-Shen Chern. Shoshi­chi was ex­cited over the pro­spect of meet­ing Chern in per­son. Al­though Shoshi­chi had heard many stor­ies of the great math­em­atician while in Par­is, he was even more im­pressed by Chern’s kind­ness. Shoshi­chi en­joyed the open and pro­duct­ive col­lab­or­at­ive at­mo­sphere as a sum­mer re­search as­so­ci­ate sponsored by Chern.

In the fall the Kobay­ashis re­turned to Prin­ceton to com­plete his second and fi­nal year at the In­sti­tute. El­ev­en months fol­low­ing their mar­riage, the couple wel­comed their first child, Sum­ire. In the fall of 1958 Shoshi­chi and Yukiko packed up for an­oth­er move, this time to MIT, where Shoshi­chi would be a postdoc­tor­al re­search as­so­ci­ate. Just as they settled in and learned that they would soon be par­ents to a second child, Shoshi­chi re­ceived a ten­ure-track of­fer from the Uni­versity of Cali­for­nia at Berke­ley. Chern would be mov­ing to Berke­ley, and he was work­ing to es­tab­lish a world-class cen­ter for math­em­at­ic­al re­search. He asked wheth­er Shoshi­chi would be in­ter­ested in join­ing the fac­ulty. There could be no great­er priv­ilege.

Since United States visa reg­u­la­tions at the time re­quired ap­plic­ants to leave the coun­try dur­ing ad­min­is­trat­ive pro­cessing for a green card, Shoshi­chi ac­cep­ted a very gen­er­ous of­fer from the Uni­versity of Brit­ish Columbia in Van­couver, Canada. In 1962 Shoshi­chi and his fam­ily re­ceived visa clear­ance, and he joined the fac­ulty at Berke­ley. A year later Volume I of The Found­a­tions of Dif­fer­en­tial Geo­metry was com­pleted and pub­lished. In 1966 Shoshi­chi be­came a full pro­fess­or at Berke­ley. He re­mained on the fac­ulty at Berke­ley after his re­tire­ment, first as pro­fess­or in gradu­ate stud­ies and then as pro­fess­or emer­it­us.