Jan-Erik Roos

Jan-Erik Ingvar Roos (16 October 1935 – 15 December 2017)[1] was a Swedish mathematician whose research interests were in abelian category theory, homological algebra, and related areas.

He was born in Halmstad, in the province of Halland on the Swedish west coast.[2] Roos enrolled at Lund University in 1954, and started studying mathematics with Lars Gårding in 1957.[3] Under Gårding's direction he wrote a thesis on ordinary differential equation, and graduated in 1958 with a licentiate degree.[2][4] Later that year he went to Paris on a doctoral scholarship;[3] there, he gravitated towards the mathematical environment at the Institut Henri Poincaré, and the various seminars held there. After a while, he started attending Alexander Grothendieck's seminar at the Institut des hautes études scientifiques in Bures-sur-Yvette, where he became interested in abstract algebra and algebraic geometry.[5] In 1967 he was invited by Saunders Mac Lane to visit the University of Chicago for three months; Mac Lane was impressed by Roos and later wrote a very positive letter of recommendation for him.[3]

Upon his return to Sweden, Roos was appointed Professor of Mathematics at Stockholm University in 1970, and started building a strong algebra school.[2] He was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1980 and was its President from 1980 to 1982.[6] While serving on the Academy, he was on the committees deciding the Rolf Schock Prizes in Mathematics[7] and the Crafoord Prize in Astronomy and Mathematics.[8]

Roos made important contributions to homological algebra, and did extensive computer-assisted studies of Hilbert–Poincaré series and their rationality.[9] A special issue of the journal Homology, Homotopy and Applications ("The Roos Festschrift volume") was published in 2002, on the occasion of his 65th birthday.[10]

He died on 15 December 2017 at his home in Uppsala[2] and is buried at the Uppsala old cemetery.