# nLab Michael Hopkins

Michael Hopkins is a mathematician at Harvard University.

Hopkins is a world leading researcher in algebraic topology and (stable-)homotopy theory.

Among his notable achievements are his work on the Ravenel conjectures, the introduction and discussion of the generalized cohomology theory tmf and its string orientation, a formalization and construction of differential cohomology, the proof of the Kervaire invariant problem. More recently via Jacob Lurie‘s work on the cobordism hypothesis Hopkins participates in work related to the foundations of quantum field theory.

## Selected writings

Introducing generalized differential cohomology motivated by the M5-brane partition function:

Introducing the nilpotence theorem in stable homotopy theory:

On elliptic genera, the Witten genus and the string orientation of tmf:

The construction of tmf was originally announced, as joint work with Mark Mahowald and Haynes Miller, in

• Michael Hopkins, section 9 of Topological modular forms, the Witten Genus, and the theorem of the cube, Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematics, Zürich 1994 (pdf)

(There the spectrum was still called “$eo_2$” instead of “$tmf$”.) The details of the definition then appeared in

On twisted equivariant K-theory with an eye towards twisted ad-equivariant K-theory:

On twisted ad-equivariant K-theory of compact Lie groups and the identification with the Verlinde ring of positive energy representations of their loop group:

1. J. Topology, 4 (2011), 737-789

2. J. Amer. Math. Soc. 26 (2013), 595-644

3. Annals of Mathematics, Volume 174 (2011) 947-1007

category: people

Last revised on February 18, 2021 at 09:46:59. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.