Friedrich Hirzebruch (1927 -2012) was a German mathematician, working in
the fields of topology, complex manifolds and algebraic geometry, and a
leading figure of his generation. Hirzebruch's first great mathematical
achievement was the proof, in 1954, of the generalization of the
classical Riemann-Roch theorem to higher dimensional complex manifolds,
now known as the Hirzebruch-Riemann-Roch theorem. This used the new
techniques of sheaf cohomology and was one of the centerpieces of the
explosion of new results in geometry and topology during the 1950s.
Further generalization of this led to the Grothendieck-Riemann-Roch
theorem, and the Atiyah-Singer index theorem. He received many awards
and honors, including the Wolf prize in 1988, the Lobachevsky prize in
1990, and fifteen honorary doctorates. These two volumes collect the
majority of his research papers, which cover a variety of topics.