| Robert Wolfe Brooks | |
| Birth Date: | 16 September 1952 |
| Birth Place: | Washington, D.C., United States |
| Death Place: | Montreal, Canada |
| Fields: | Mathematics |
| Workplaces: | University of Maryland, University of Southern California, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology |
| Alma Mater: | Harvard University |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Raoul Bott |
| Known For: | Spectral geometry, Riemann surfaces, circle packings, differential geometry |
| Awards: | Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, Guastella Fellowship |
Robert Wolfe Brooks (Washington, D.C., September 16, 1952 - Montreal, September 5, 2002) was a mathematician known for his work in spectral geometry, Riemann surfaces, circle packings, and differential geometry.
He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1977; his thesis, The smooth cohomology of groups of diffeomorphisms, was written under the supervision of Raoul Bott. He worked at the University of Maryland (1979 - 1984), then at the University of Southern California, and then, from 1995, at the Technion in Haifa.[1]
In an influential paper, Brooks proved that the bounded cohomology of a topological space is isomorphic to the bounded cohomology of its fundamental group.[2]
Reviewer Maung Min-Oo for MathSciNet wrote: "This is a well written survey article on the construction of isospectral manifolds which are not isometric with emphasis on hyperbolic Riemann surfaces of constant negative curvature."
. 2179784. Jürg Peter Buser. On the mathematical work of Robert Brooks. Geometry, spectral theory, groups, and dynamics. 1 - 35. Contemp. Math.. 387. Amer. Math. Soc.. Providence, RI. 2005. 9780821885642.