About the Author

Biography of David Mumford David Mumford was born on June 11, 1937 in England and has been associated with Harvard University continuously from entering as freshman to his present position of Higgins Professor of Mathematics. Mumford worked in the fields of Algebraic Gemetry in the 60's and 70's, concentrating especially on the theory of moduli spaces: spaces which classify all objects of some type, such as all curves of a given genus or all vector bundles on a fixed curve of given rank and degree. Mumford was awarded the Fields Medal in 1974 for his work on moduli spaces and algebraic surfaces. He is presently working on the mathematics of pattern recognition and artificial intelligence.