Chronology

1950 - 1960



1950

  • Carnap publishes Logical Foundations of Probability.
  • Hamming publishes a fundamental paper on error-detecting and error-correcting codes.
  • Hodge puts forward the "Hodge Conjecture" on projective algebraic varieties.

1951

  • Serre uses spectral sequences to the study of the relations between the homology groups of fibre, total space and base space in a fibration. This enables him to discover fundamental connections between the homology groups and homotopy groups of a space and to prove important results on the homotopy groups of spheres.

1952

1954

  • Serre is awarded a Fields Medal for his work on spectral sequences and his work developing complex variable theory in terms of sheaves.
  • Kolmogorov publishes his second paper on the theory of dynamical systems. This marks the beginning of KAM-theory, which is named after Kolmogorov, Arnold and Moser.

1955

  • Cartan and Eilenberg develop homological algebra which allows powerful algebraic methods and topological methods to be related.
  • Novikov proves the insolubility of the word problem for groups.
  • Taniyama poses his conjecture on elliptic curves which will play a major role in the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.

1956

1957

  • Kolmogorov solves "Hilbert's Thirteenth Problem" on continuous functions of three variables which cannot be represented by continuous functions of two variables.

1958

  • Thom is awarded a Fields Medal for his work on topology, in particular on characteristic classes, cobordism theory and the "Thom transversality theorem".

1959

  • Boone proves that many decision problems for groups are insoluble.
  • Marshall Hall publishes his famous text Theory of Groups.