Jenny Harrison

Short Biography

Jenny Harrison is a professor of mathematics at UC Berkeley. She specializes in geometric analysis and areas in the intersection of algebra, geometry, and geometric measure theory. Her most important contribution to mathematics has come in recent years when she developed a theory of operator calculus that unifies an infinitesimal calculus with the classical theory of the smooth continuum, a long outstanding problem. The infinitesimals are constructive and arise from methods of standard analysis, as opposed to the nonstandard analysis of Abraham Robinson. The methods apply equally well to a large class of domains called differential chains which include soap films, fractals, graphs of functions, charged particles, as well as smooth manifolds. The results include optimal generalizations and simplifications of the theorems of Stokes, Gauss and Green. She is also known for her counterexamples to the Denjoy conjecture and a version of the Seifert conjecture. She has pioneered applications of operator calculus (called chainlet geometry in and ) to the calculus of variations, physics, and numerical analysis.