John Erik Fornaess

John Erik Fornæss (born 14 October 1946, Hamar, Norway) is a Norwegian-American mathematician. Fornæss received his master's degree in 1970 from the University of Oslo with thesis Uniform approximation on manifolds and his PhD in 1974 from the University of Washington under Edgar Lee Stout with thesis Embedding Strictly Pseudoconvex Domains in Convex Domains. At Princeton University he became in 1974 an instructor, in 1976 an assistant professor, in 1978 an associate professor, and in 1981 a full professor. Since 1991 he has been a professor at the University of Michigan.

He does research on the theory of functions of several complex variables with emphasis on their geometry and dynamics. With Nessim Sibony he constructed a Fatou-Julia theory in two complex variables. He is also known for constructing a counterexample in several complex variables in 1976.

Fornæss is a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. In 2015 he was elected a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society. Fornæss has an Erdős number of 2.

Articles

• with Klas Diederich: Diederich K, Fornaess JE (1975). "Exhaustion functions and Stein neighborhoods for smooth pseudoconvex domains". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 72 (9): 3279–3280. doi:10.1073/pnas.72.9.3279. PMC 432973. PMID 16592273.
• with Klas Diederich: Diederich K, Fornaess JE (1977). "Complex submanifolds in real-analytic pseudoconvex domains". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 74 (8): 3126–3127. doi:10.1073/pnas.74.8.3126. PMC 431463. PMID 16592428.

Books

• with Berit Stensønes: Lectures on counterexamples in several complex variables, Mathematical Notes 33, Princeton University Press, 1987; 2nd edition 2007
• as editor: Dynamics of several complex variables, American Mathematical Society 1996
• as editor: Recent developments in several complex variables, Princeton University Press 1981
• as editor: Several complex variables (Proceedings Mittag-Leffler Institut 1987/88), Princeton University Press 1993