Theodore James Courant is a mathematician who has conducted research in the fields of differential geometry and classical mechanics

Classical mechanics

In physics, classical mechanics is one of the two major sub-fields of mechanics, which is concerned with the set of physical laws describing the motion of bodies under the action of a system of forces...

. In particular, he made seminal contributions to the study of Dirac manifolds, which generalize both symplectic manifold

Symplectic manifold

In mathematics, a symplectic manifold is a smooth manifold, M, equipped with a closed nondegenerate differential 2-form, ω, called the symplectic form. The study of symplectic manifolds is called symplectic geometry or symplectic topology...

s and Poisson manifold

Poisson manifold

In mathematics, a Poisson manifold is a differentiable manifold M such that the algebra C^\infty\, of smooth functions over M is equipped with a bilinear map called the Poisson bracket, turning it into a Poisson algebra...

s, and are related to the Dirac theory of constraints

Dirac bracket

The Dirac bracket is a generalization of the Poisson bracket developed by Paul Dirac to correctly treat systems with second class constraints in Hamiltonian mechanics and canonical quantization. It is an important part of Dirac's development of Hamiltonian mechanics to handle more general Lagrangians...

 in physics. Some mathematical objects in this field have since been named after him, including the Courant bracket

Courant bracket

In a field of mathematics known as differential geometry, the Courant bracket is a generalization of the Lie bracket from an operation on the tangent bundle to an operation on the direct sum of the tangent bundle and the vector bundle of p-forms....

 and Courant algebroid

Courant algebroid

In a field of mathematics known as differential geometry, a Courant algebroid is a combination of a Lie algebroid and a quadratic Lie algebra. It was originally introduced in 1990 by Theodore James Courant in his dissertation at UC Berkeley where he first called them Dirac Manifolds, and then were...

. He received his B.A. degree from Reed College

Reed College

Reed College is a private, independent, liberal arts college located in southeast Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus located in Portland's Eastmoreland neighborhood, featuring architecture based on the Tudor-Gothic style, and a forested canyon wilderness...

 and his Ph.D. from The University of California, Berkeley, where he was a student of Alan Weinstein

Alan Weinstein

Alan David Weinstein is a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley who works in symplectic geometry, Poisson Geometry and Mathematical Physics....

.

Courant has more recently turned his attention to education: he currently chairs the math department at the Bentley School, a private preparatory school in Lafayette, California http://www.bentleyschool.net/index.php?location=aboutus&subnav=community&subsubnav=facultyandstaff&subsubsubnav=upper, and is also a member of the Educational Advisory Committee at MSRI

Mathematical Sciences Research Institute

The Mathematical Sciences Research Institute , founded in 1982, is an independent nonprofit mathematical research institution whose funding sources include the National Science Foundation, foundations, corporations, and more than 90 universities and institutions...

http://www.msri.org/about/governance/ShowMembers?comid=16, teacher of Outstanding Differential Equations, and an instructor at the Berkeley Math Circle http://mathcircle.berkeley.edu/index.php?options=bmc%7Cpeople%7CPeople.