Joe Harris (mathematician)
Joseph Daniel Harris is the Higgins Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University. He specializes in the field of algebraic geometry. After earning an AB from Harvard College he continued at Harvard to study for a PhD under Phillip Griffiths.
Work
During the 1980s, he was on the faculty of Brown University, moving to Harvard in 1988. He served as chair of the department at Harvard from 2002 to 2005. His work is characterized by its classical geometric flavor: he has claimed that nothing he thinks about could not have been imagined by the Italian geometers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and that if he has had greater success than them, it is because he has access to better tools.Harris is well known for several of his books on algebraic geometry, notable for their informal presentations:
- Principles of Algebraic Geometry, with Phillip Griffiths
- Geometry of Algebraic Curves, Vol. 1, with Enrico Arbarello, Maurizio Cornalba, and Phillip Griffiths
- , with William Fulton
- , with David Eisenbud
- Moduli of Curves, with Ian Morrison.
- Fat Chance: Probability from 0 to 1, with Benedict Gross and Emily Riehl, 2019