George Rushing Kempf (Globe, Arizona, August 12, 1944 – Lawrence, Kansas, July 16, 2002) was a mathematician who worked on algebraic geometry, who proved the Riemann–Kempf singularity theorem, the Kempf–Ness theorem, the Kempf vanishing theorem, and who introduced Kempf varieties.
'I met George in 1970 when he burst on the algebraic geometry scene with a spectacular PhD thesis.
His thesis gave a wonderful analysis of the singularities of the subvarieties
This was one of the major themes that he pursued throughout his career: understanding the interaction of a curve with its Jacobian and especially to the map from the
and of its tangent cone at all its singular points, which gives you a complete understanding of the nature of these singularities' – David Mumford 'One of the things that distinguished his work was the total mastery with which he used higher cohomology.