Richard Earl Block is a mathematician at the University of California at Riverside who works on Lie algebras over fields of prime characteristic. He was the first to discover the central extension of the Witt algebra

Witt algebra

In mathematics, the complex Witt algebra, named after Ernst Witt, is the Lie algebra of meromorphic vector fields defined on the Riemann sphere that are holomorphic except at two fixed points. It is also the complexification of the Lie algebra of polynomial vector fields on a circle, and the Lie...

 that gives the Virasoro algebra

Virasoro algebra

In mathematics, the Virasoro algebra is a complex Lie algebra, given as a central extension of the complex polynomial vector fields on the circle, and is widely used in conformal field theory and string theory....

, though his discovery went unnoticed for many years. With R. L. Wilson he classified the simple Lie algebras over "well behaved" fields of finite characteristic.

Publications

• R.E. Block, On the Mills–Seligman axioms for Lie algebras of classical type Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. , 121 (1966) pp. 378–392 (The paper that gives the central extension defining the Virasoro algebra).
• Richard E. Block and Robert Lee Wilson The Restricted Simple Lie Algebras are of Classical or Cartan Type PNAS August 15, 1984 vol. 81 no. 16 5271-5274