Loring W. Tu
Loring W. Tu is a Taiwanese-American mathematician working in algebraic topology and geometry.
Life
Tu was born in Taipei, Taiwan, the grandson of Taiwanese pharmacologist Tu Tsung-ming, founder of Taiwan's first private medical school and the first dean of the School of Medicine of National Taiwan University.Tu is a younger brother of Charles Tu, who is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, San Diego. He also has another brother, Samson Tu; all siblings became academics. During his childhood, Tu and his family lived with his grandparents. When Tsung-ming established Kaohsiung Medical University, Tu and his family moved with him to Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
Tu and his brothers were educated at Datong Elementary School in Kaohsiung, and Tu attended Kaohsiung Municipal No. 2 Middle School, leaving Taiwan for United States and Canada while still in junior high school. Tu initially entered McGill University to study pure mathematics and later transferred to complete his undergraduate studies in the United States. He graduated from Princeton University in 1974 with a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics, then entered graduate school at Harvard University, where he was mentored by professors Raoul Bott and Phillip Griffiths. Tu earned a Master of Arts and Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard in 1976 and 1979, respectively. His doctoral advisor was Phillip A. Griffiths. His doctoral thesis was titled "Variation of Hodge Structure and the Local Torelli Problem".