Professor Victor Snaith

05 Jul 2021, by ablahatherell in News


Victor Snaith, Emeritus Professor at Sheffield University, passed away peacefully in his sleep on 3 July 2021. A number of us have worked with Victor at the Heilbronn Institute, and others knew him during his time at Sheffield and before. He has done very significant work across related areas of pure mathematics, and has been a good friend of the Heilbronn Institute and of a number of our members.


Victor Snaith received his PhD in 1969 from the University of Warwick under the supervision of Luke Hodgkin. He then held academic positions at a number of institutions including University of Cambridge , the University of Western Ontario, the University of Southampton, McMaster University and most recently until his retirement at the University of Sheffield. His research interests include algebraic K-theory, algebraic topology, algebraic geometry, number theory and representation theory of groups. In the mid-1980s he applied methods of algebraic topology (stable homotopy theory) to prove a result of the representation theory of groups (Richard Brauer’s Induction Theorem, Explicit Brauer Induction). Victor also applied algebraic K-theory in algebraic geometry.


He will be greatly missed by his many friends, his family, by those whose careers he progressed through his mentorship, and by mathematicians worldwide.