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E. Christopher Zeeman
 About E.C. Zeeman- Christopher Zeeman, Wikipedia
- E. Christopher Zeeman, Mathematics Genealogy Project
- S. Smale, Catastrophe theory: selected papers, 1972-1977, by E.C. Zeeman, Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 84:1360-1368 (1978)
- Sir Christopher Zeeman talks to Dr. John Favell of the Open University about his life and work, Maths Miscellany, BBC 5 1 (1992)
- F. Takens, The work of Professor Sir Christopher Zeeman FRS, Nieuw Arch. Wisk. (4) 11:251-256 (1993)
- S. Markvorsen, An interview with Professor Sir Christopher Zeeman, Newsletter of the European Mathematical Society 30:14-19 (1998)
- A. Jackson, The IHÉS at forty, Notices AMS (1999)
| | Nowadays the term catastrophe theory inevitably
calls to mind the controversy that surrounded
attempts to apply the theory in a wide
range of scientific fields. At the center of the controversy
was the British mathematician Christopher
Zeeman, who was a frequent visitor to the IHÉS in
the 1960s and 1970s and an enthusiastic proponent
of Thom’s ideas. It was Zeeman who went the
furthest in attempting to apply catastrophe theory
in physics and biology, and even in sociology and
politics. These applications were enthusiastically
taken up by practitioners in other sciences and heralded
in the press. What ended up happening was
that the unsuccessful attempts were labeled applications
of catastrophe theory, and the successful
attempts were labeled more neutrally, as applications
of singularity theory. Indeed, many of
the ideas that originally came under the rubric of
catastrophe theory are still alive in singularity theory,
which remains today an active area of mathematical
research. | |
- F.J. Craveiro de Carvalho, An interview with E.C. Zeeman, Centro Internacional de Matemática (2001)
- C. Arnot, Interview with Professor Sir Christopher Zeeman, Warwick The Magazine 6 (2005)
- T. Phillips, The catastrophe machine, AMS
- Sir Christopher Zeeman FRS (1925-2016), LMS (2016)
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