PRESENTATION OUTLINE
YUTAKA TANIYAMA 1927-1958
Yutaka Taniyama is from a small town of Kisai about 30 miles north of Tokyo. His name was originally Toyo Taniyama but most people misread it as Yutaka. Taniyama eventually started using it as his own name. His parents were Sahei, a medical doctor, and Kaku Taniyama.
Yutaka was born into a large family having three brothers and four sisters. Yutaka was sick most of his childhood and missed most of high school with tuberculosis. After high school, Yutaka enrolled at the University of Tokyo to study mathematics. During his college years he studied algebraic geometry, algebraic curves, and abelian varieties. Algebra lectures by Masao Sugawara encouraged his interest in the number theory. He graduated in March 1953 as one of the older students graduating in that year.
He remained at the University of Tokyo as a "special research student" in the Department of Mathematics. Taniyama lived in a one-room apartment with 81 feet to work with. He had to take showers at a local public center and used a bathroom in his apartment building, as there were no bathrooms in the apartment rooms.
Taniyama was interested in the algebraic number theory and he is known for two problems "posed by him at the symposium on Algebraic Number Theory held in Tokyo and Nikko in 1955." Meeting with André Weil at this symposium influenced Taniyama's work.
With a great future in front of him, in mathematics and life, as he was planning a marriage to Misako Suzuki, he decided to take his own life. Their wedding preparations were quite far advanced. They had already signed a lease on a new apartment and purchased utensils for their kitchen.
He left a long note that stated,"Until yesterday I have had no definite intention of killing myself. But more than a few must have noticed I have been tired both physically and mentally. As to the cause of my suicide, I don't quite understand it myself, but it is not the result of a particular incident, nor of a specific matter. Merely may I say, I am in the frame of mind that I lost confidence in my future. There may be some to whom my suicide will be troubling or a blow to a certain degree. I sincerely hope that this incident will cast no dark shadow over the future of that person. At any rate I cannot deny that this is a kind of betrayal, but please excuse it as my last act in my own way, as I have been doing all my life."
About a month later his fiancé Misako Suzuki also committed suicide. She also left a note saying," We promised each other that no matter where we went, we would never be separated. Now that he is gone, I must go too in order to join him."
