Robert L. Bryant

A North Carolina native, Robert Bryant received his PhD in Mathematics in 1979 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, working under the direction of Robert B. Gardner. After serving on the faculty at Rice University for seven years, he moved to Duke University in 1987, where he held the Juanita M. Kreps Chair in Mathematics, moving to the University of California at Berkeley in July 2007, serving there 2007–2013 as the fifth Director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, and returning in July 2013 to Duke University as the Phillip Griffiths Professor of Mathematics.

His research interests center on exterior differential systems and the geometry of differential equations as well as their applications to Riemannian geometry, special holonomy, and mathematical physics.

In 2002, he was appointed by then-President Bush to serve on the Board of Directors of the Vietnam Education Foundation, and he currently serves on the International Committee for the National Mathematics Center of Nigeria. He has served as the director of the Park City/IAS Mathematics Institute and as President of the American Mathematical Society (2015 & 2016).

He is a fellow of the American Mathematical Society and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.