Sciences
TURKEY
Cahit Arf
By Bilge
Cahit Arf, a Turkish mathematician,
was born on 11 October 1910 in
Selanik (Thessaloniki), which is now
in Greece. His family migrated to
Istanbulwith the outbreak of the
Balkan War in 1912. The family
finally settled in ?zmir where Cahit
Arf received his primary education.
Upon receiving a scholarship from
the Turkish Ministry of Education he
continued his
education in Paris
and graduated
from École
Normale
Supérieure.
Returning to
Turkey, he taught
mathematics at
Galatasaray High
School. In 1933 he joined the
Mathematics Department of Istanbul
University. In 1937 he went to
Göttingen, where he received his PhD
from the University of Göttingen and
he worked with Helmut Hasse and
Josue Cruz de Munoz. Arf spent the
period of 1964–1966 working at the
Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton, New Jersey.
He is known for the Arf invariant of a
quadratic form in characteristic
(applied in knot theory and surgery
theory) in topology, the Hasse–Arf
theorem in ramification theory, Arf
semigroups, and Arf rings.
Arf received numerous awards for his
contributions to mathematics, among
them are: ?nönü Award in 1948,
Scientific and Technological Research
Council of
Turkey
(TÜB?TAK)
Science
Award in
1974, and
Commandeur
des Palmes
Academiques
(France) in
1994. Arf
was a member of the Mainz Academy
and the Turkish Academy of
Sciences. He was the president of the
Turkish Mathematical Society from
1985 until 1989. Arf died on
December 26, 1997 in Bebek,
Istanbul, at the age of 87. His
collected works were published, in
1988, by the Turkish Mathematical
Society.
Arf’s portrait is depicted on the
reverse of the Turkish 10 lira
banknote issued in 2009.