Tsit Yuen Lam


Tsit Yuen Lam is a Hong Kong-American mathematician specializing in algebra, especially ring theory and quadratic forms.

Academic career

Lam earned his bachelor's degree at the University of Hong Kong in 1963 and his Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1967 under Hyman Bass, with a thesis titled On Grothendieck Groups. Subsequently, he was an instructor at the University of Chicago and since 1968 he has been at the University of California, Berkeley, where he became assistant professor in 1969, associate professor in 1972, and full professor in 1976. He served as assistant department head several times. From 1995 to 1997 he was Deputy Director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, California.
Among his doctoral students is Richard Elman.

Awards and honors

From 1972 to 1974 he was a Sloan Fellow; in 1978–79 a Miller Research Professor; and in 1981–82 a Guggenheim Fellow. In 1982 he was awarded the Leroy P. Steele Prize for his textbooks.
In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.

Selected publications