Biography of Shoichiro Sakai
Shoichiro Sakai was born in 1928 in Kanuma, Japan. He received his B. A. in mathematics in 1953 and his doctorate in 1961 from Tohoku University, Sendai. He was a research assistant there (195-1960), then a faculty member of Waseda University, Tokyo (1960-1964). After 2 years on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, he became a professor in 1966 and stayed there till 1979 when he returned to Japan to a chair at Nihon University, Tokyo. Prof. Sakai has also held visiting positions at Yale University (1962-1964) and at MIT (1967-1968). His main interests are in operator algebras, functional analysis and mathematical physics.