Eisenbud is the son of
mathematical physicist Leonard Eisenbud, who was a student and collaborator of the renowned
physicist Eugene Wigner. Eisenbud received his
Ph.D. in 1970 from the
University of Chicago, where he was a student of
Saunders Mac Lane and, unofficially,
James Christopher Robson. He then taught at
Brandeis University from 1970 to 1997, during which time he had visiting positions at
Harvard University,
Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHÉS),
University of Bonn, and
Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). He joined the staff at MSRI in 1997, and took a position at Berkeley at the same time. From 2003 to 2005 Eisenbud was President of the
American Mathematical Society. Eisenbud's mathematical interests include
commutative and
non-commutative algebra,
algebraic geometry,
topology, and computational methods in these fields. He has written over 150 papers and books with over 60 co-authors. Notable contributions include the theory of matrix factorizations for
maximal Cohen–Macaulay modules over
hypersurface rings, the
Eisenbud–Goto conjecture on degrees of generators of
syzygy modules, and the
Buchsbaum–Eisenbud criterion for
exactness of a complex. He also proposed the
Eisenbud–Evans conjecture, which was later settled by the
Indian mathematician
Neithalath Mohan Kumar. He has had 31 doctoral students, including
Craig Huneke,
Mircea Mustaţă,
Irena Peeva, and Gregory G. Smith (winner of the
Aisenstadt Prize in 2007). Eisenbud's hobbies are
juggling (he has written two papers on the
mathematics of juggling) and music. He has appeared in
Brady Haran's online video channel "
Numberphile". Eisenbud was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2006. He was awarded the
Leroy P. Steele Prize in 2010. In 2012 he became a fellow of the
American Mathematical Society. ==Selected publications==