I, Mikhail Katz, am the author of this article, (Pao Ming Pu), and I release its content under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 and later. Website for systolic geometry and topology

Pao Ming Pu (1910-1988)

Pu's systolic paper (msn)

Pu's inequality for the real projective plane can be written as follows:

sys² ≤ ^π⁄₂area.

View an introduction (pdf) to Pu's inequality for the real projective plane.

We include brief biographical remarks for this pioneer of systolic geometry.

1. Thesis under Loewner. The first name is spelled Bao Ming in the recently modified system of transliteration. Pu received his Ph.D. at Syracuse University in 1950 under the supervision of Charles Loewner, resulting in the publication of the seminal paper containing both Pu's inequality and the Loewner inequality. The listing at the website of the Mathematical Genealogy Project indicates that his first name, according to Syracuse University records, was FRANK.

Following Chiang Kai-shek's ouster from the mainland in 1949, there was apparently a wave of recalls of Chinese academics working in the West. One such case was Wu, Wen Tsün, a student of Cartan's in Paris, who one day disappeared from France without saying a word to anyone.

2. Mainland. Pu may have also been forced to return to the mainland by the communist authorities. He was professor at Sichuan University, Chengdu. Perhaps because someone who had spent time in the West was automatically suspect, Pu was unable to advise students for most of his scientific career. According to the official obituary (msn) (Chinese), he was finally granted the coveted status of boshi sheng dao shi (supervisor of graduate students) at the ripe age of 71, four years after the end of the infamous cultural revolution. Most of his later papers concern fuzzy topology.

3. Additional historical remarks may be found in the entry under Berger

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