Peter Landweber


Peter Steven Landweber is an American mathematician working in algebraic topology.
Landweber studied at the University of Iowa and the Harvard University, where he graduated in 1965 after studying under Raoul Bott. He was then Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia and at Yale University from 1968 to 1970. From 1967 to 1968 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. In 1970, he became Associate Professor at the Rutgers University, where he taught from 1974 until his retorement in 2007. From 1974 to 1975 he was a NATO fellow at the University of Cambridge. Since 2007, he is a Professor Emeritus at Rutgers University.
Landweber studied complex bordism in algebraic topology. In the beginning of the 1970s, he proved his exact functor theorem, which allows the construction of a homology theory from a formal group law. In 1986 he introduced elliptic cohomology with Douglas C. Ravenel and Robert E. Stong, which is a generalized cohomology theory with applications to modular forms and elliptic curves.
From 1989 to 1992 he was Chairman of the Russian translation Committee of the American Mathematical Society. He is also a fellow of the society.
Peter Landweber is the elder son of the engineer Louis Landweber and the father of the molecular biologist Laura Faye Landweber and of the mathematician Gregory David Landweber.

Selected publications