 Raoul Bott

Raoul Bott made fundamental contributions to topology and differential geometry, with applications to Lie groups and differential operators. Harvard's departmental memorial documents this range of work.^[ref]

With Michael Atiyah, he developed a holomorphic Lefschetz fixed-point formula for elliptic complexes. In the holomorphic setting, global traces on cohomology become a sum of local contributions from nondegenerate fixed points. This connects a map's behavior at isolated points with its action on global solution spaces.^[ref]

Raoul Bott (1923–2005) was a renowned Hungarian-born mathematician who made significant contributions to several areas of mathematics, particularly in topology, algebraic topology, and differential geometry. He is best known for his work on Morse theory, the Bott vanishing theorem, and bott periodicity in K-theory. His research has had a lasting impact on various mathematical fields, including the theory of characteristic classes and the study of manifolds.