Bang-Yen Chen

Chen Bang-yen is a Taiwan-born mathematician who works mainly on differential geometry and related subjects.

He received his B.S. from Tamkang University in 1965 and his M.Sc.

Chen Bang-yen taught at Tamkang University between 1965 and 1968, and at the National Tsing Hua University in the academic year 1967–1968.

from National Tsing Hua University in 1967.

After his doctoral years (1968-1970) at University of Notre Dame, he joined the faculty at Michigan State University as a research associate from 1970 to 1972, where he became associate professor in 1972, and full professor in 1976.

He obtained his Ph.D. degree from University of Notre Dame in 1970 under the supervision of Tadashi Nagano.

He was a University Distinguished Professor of Michigan State University from 1990 to 2012.

He was presented with the title of University Distinguished Professor in 1990.

In 1993, Chen studied submanifolds of space forms, showing that the intrinsic sectional curvature at any point is bounded below in terms of the intrinsic scalar curvature, the length of the mean curvature vector, and the curvature of the space form.

In particular, as a consequence of the Gauss equation, given a minimal submanifold of Euclidean space, every sectional curvature at a point is greater than or equal to one-half of the scalar curvature at that point.

Interestingly, the submanifolds for which the inequality is an equality can be characterized as certain products of minimal surfaces of low dimension with Euclidean spaces.

Chen introduced and systematically studied the notion of a finite type submanifold of Euclidean space, which is a submanifold for which the position vector is a finite linear combination of eigenfunctions of the Laplace-Beltrami operator.

He also introduced and studied a generalization of the class of totally real submanifolds and of complex submanifolds; a slant submanifold of an almost Hermitian manifold is a submanifold for which there is a number k such that the image under the almost complex structure of an arbitrary submanifold tangent vector has an angle of k with the submanifold's tangent space.

In Riemannian geometry, Chen and Kentaro Yano initiated the study of spaces of quasi-constant curvature.

Chen also introduced the δ-invariants (also called Chen invariants), which are certain kinds of partial traces of the sectional curvature; they can be viewed as an interpolation between sectional curvature and scalar curvature.

Due to the Gauss equation, the δ-invariants of a Riemannian submanifold can be controlled by the length of the mean curvature vector and the size of the sectional curvature of the ambient manifold.

Submanifolds of space forms which satisfy the equality case of this inequality are known as ideal immersions; such submanifolds are critical points of a certain restriction of the Willmore energy.

Major articles

Surveys

Books

After 2012 he became University Distinguished professor emeritus.

Chen Bang-yen (陳邦彦) is a Taiwanese-American mathematician.

After 2012 he became University Distinguished Professor Emeritus.

Chen Bang-yen is the author of over 560 works including 12 books, mainly in differential geometry and related subjects.

He also co-edited four books, three of them were published by Springer Nature and one of them by American Mathematical Society.

His works have been cited over 36,000 times.

On October 20–21, 2018, at the 1143rd Meeting of the American Mathematical Society held at Ann Arbor, Michigan, one of the Special Sessions was dedicated to Chen Bang-yen's 75th birthday.

The volume 756 in the Contemporary Mathematics series, published by the American Mathematical Society, is dedicated to Chen Bang-yen, and it includes many contributions presented in the Ann Arbor event.

The volume is edited by Joeri Van der Veken, Alfonso Carriazo, Ivko Dimitrić, Yun Myung Oh, Bogdan Suceavă, and Luc Vrancken.

Given an almost Hermitian manifold, a totally real submanifold is one for which the tangent space is orthogonal to its image under the almost complex structure.

From the algebraic structure of the Gauss equation and the Simons formula, Chen and Koichi Ogiue derived a number of information on submanifolds of complex space forms which are totally real and minimal.

By using Shiing-Shen Chern, Manfredo do Carmo, and Shoshichi Kobayashi's estimate of the algebraic terms in the Simons formula, Chen and Ogiue showed that closed submanifolds which are totally real and minimal must be totally geodesic if the second fundamental form is sufficiently small.

By using the Codazzi equation and isothermal coordinates, they also obtained rigidity results on two-dimensional closed submanifolds of complex space forms which are totally real.