Friedrich Ernst Peter Hirzebruch ForMemRS[1] (17 October 1927 – 27 May 2012) was a German mathematician, working in the fields of topology, complex manifolds and algebraic geometry, and a leading figure in his generation.

Hirzebruch then held a position at Erlangen, followed by the years 1952–54 at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

He went on to write the foundational papers on topological K-theory with Michael Atiyah, and collaborated with Armand Borel on the theory of characteristic classes.

His work influenced a generation of prominent mathematicians like Kunihiko Kodaira, John Milnor, Borel, Atiyah, Raoul Bott and Jean-Pierre Serre.

[citation needed] In March 1945, Hirzebruch became a soldier, and in April, in the last weeks of Hitler's rule, he was taken prisoner by the British forces then invading Germany from the west.

Some of them include Egbert Brieskorn, Matthias Kreck, Don Zagier, Detlef Gromoll, Klaus Jänich, Lothar Göttsche, Dietmar Arlt, Winfried Scharlau, Walter Neumann, Wolfgang Meyer, Kang Zuo, Hans Scheerer, Erich Ossa, Klaus Lamotke, Eduardo Mendoza, Dimitrios Dais and Friedhelm Waldhausen.