George Elliott
Fellow
Current Employer
University of Toronto
Election Year
1982
Academy
Academy of Science
Discipline
Mathematics and Computer Sciences
Department
Department of Mathematics
Keywords
Operator algebras, amenable C*-algebras, classification, K-theory, structure theory, mathematical physics
George Elliott has made important contributions to operator algebras. His work on derivations and his discovery of the significance of K-theory for AF-algebras have been the basis for work by leading mathematicians all over the world. Akemann and Pedersen's characterization of the separable C*-algebras for which all derivations are inner, stated 'We have borrowed freely from the ideas of G.A. Elliott '. In AF-algebras, a chaotic situation was completely changed by Elliott's discovery that with natural ordering, the group Ko has the Riesz separation property and is a complete invariant for the AF-algebra.