Remembering Professor Aderemi O. Kuku (1941–2022), an Internationally Recognized Mathematician and Scholar
Communicated by Notices Associate Editor Asamoah Nkwanta
It was announced in February that Aderemi O. Kuku, a distinguished mathematician and internationally recognized scholar, was no longer with us. A dual citizen of Nigeria and the United States, Professor Kuku had a long, brilliant, and productive career in Nigeria and around the world as a mathematics professor, scholar, prolific author, and a highly requested presenter.
On February 15, 2022, in Nigeria’s National Newspaper, The Daily Post, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari stated that he had condoled with the family of the renowned mathematician, Professor Aderemi O. Kuku, over the passing of this distinguished scholar and administrator on February 13, 2022.
In a condolence message by his spokesman, Femi Adesina, on February 15, President Buhari acknowledged that the late Professor Kuku’s work would continue to stand as a testimony of his diligence, scholarship, and brilliance. He, therefore, joined the academic and mathematical sciences communities in Nigeria and abroad, in mourning the researcher and author who shared his knowledge and talents with so many, in so many different arenas and in so many different countries.
Aderemi Oluyomi Kuku, the son of Busari Adeoye Kuku and Abusatu Oriaran Baruwa, was born in Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State in the African country of Nigeria on March 20, 1941 as a member of the famous Kuku family in Ijebu-Ode. Aderemi Oluyomi Kuku is a descendant of Oba Ofiran. The mother of Aderemi’s father (Busari Adeoye Kuku) was Barikisu Kuku, a great granddaughter of Oba Ofiran and Otunba Kuku (a Professor) who was a member of the Adetuyo Ruling House of Owa of Okun-Owa.
With this background, it is easy to understand why Aderemi’s parents had a strong commitment to educate their children. Aderemi’s two older brothers became experts in telecommunications and electrical technology, respectively, and his younger brother became a professor of Electronics. Aderemi had an affinity for mathematics as a career and he pursued it. Aderemi Kuku’s first school was Bishop Oluwole Memorial School, in Agege, Lagos State, Nigeria. He then attended St James, an Anglican primary school, Oke-Odan, in Ogun State, becoming the first in the school to leave with a certificate. He then attended the Eko Boys High School in Lagos, Nigeria from 1955 to 1959. In his final year of study, 1959, he was Head Boy of the High School. This school had been founded in 1913 and when it celebrated its centennial birthday on 13 January 2013, Kuku was honored with a special award for distinguished accomplishments at the centenary dinner held at the Banquet Hall of the Nigerian Law School.
After graduating from Eko Boys High School, he went to Abeokuta Grammar School where he obtained the Highest School Certificate in Mathematics. At this stage of his education, Kuku had options. He was awarded a scholarship from the African Scholarship Program of American Universities. These scholarships were for highly qualified African secondary school students to go to the United States to study for a first degree. This program was administered by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which also had a program to take Nigerian students to Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda, to study for a first degree. Makerere was part of the University of East Africa which was an independent external college of the University of London in England. Kuku was advised that a British degree was more highly valued in Nigeria than one from the United States, so he chose to study at Makerere University College (which became the independent Makerere University in 1970). A University of London degree was highly valued, but it was difficult to achieve. This was because a student had to take the same examination at the end of the three-year courses as did students studying in London and yet the teaching at Makerere was not of the quality of that in London.
Kuku entered Makerere University College in 1962 and, in 1965, was awarded a BSc degree with Special Honors in Mathematics. He achieved the Special Honors degree by doing lots of studying on his own, in addition to the material taught in the courses. After graduating, Kuku was appointed Assistant Lecturer at the University of Ife in Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria. This university was founded in 1961 and teaching began in October of the following year. We note that it was renamed Obafemi Awolowo University in 1987, the name it currently has in 2022. Despite having a university position, Kuku had no plans to end his education at the BSc degree level. He enrolled at the University of Ibadan to study for a master’s degree. This university had been established in 1948 as a college of the University of London, being the first university to be established in Nigeria. It became an independent university in 1962, after Nigerian independence.
Kuku’s MSc degree was supervised at the University of Ibadan by Joshua Leslie who had studied at the University of Chicago. Leslie then went to the University of Paris and did research to earn a doctorate. When Kuku enrolled in the University of Ibadan, Leslie had just returned from a research visit to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Although Leslie was not an expert in algebra, the area that interested Kuku, Leslie had met Hyman Bass at Princeton and realized that there were important new developments happening in algebra. Kuku went to the library and began to read recent algebra papers, which was somewhat of a challenge since Leslie was not able to help him. Moreover, Kuku had to teach courses at the University of Ife. He submitted an MSc thesis “A Survey of Algebraic K-Theory.” At Professor Leslie’s request, Kuku’s MSc thesis was supervised by Professor Hyman Bass as an external examiner. In 1968, Kuku was awarded an MSc degree from University of Ibadan.
After receiving an invitation from Hyman Bass to come to Columbia University to do research for a doctorate degree, Kuku arranged a leave from the University of Ibadan and spent the year 1970–71 at Columbia University with Hyman Bass as his thesis advisor. Kuku returned to the University of Ibadan in 1971, submitted his thesis “On the Whitehead group of p-adic integral group-rings of finite p-groups,” and was awarded a PhD by the University of Ibadan.
His distinguished career started at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria in 1968 when he accepted the position of Lecturer II in Mathematics at the University of Ibadan, replacing Joshua Leslie who had joined the faculty at Northwestern University. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer in Mathematics in 1976, to Reader in Mathematics in 1980, to full Professor of Mathematics in 1982 at the age of 41, to Head of the Mathematics Dept. from 1983–86, to Dean of the Postgraduate School from 1986–90, and Committee Chair of all Postgraduate Schools in Nigerian Universities from 1986–90. From 1995–2003, he was Professor of Mathematics at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (a UN sponsored research centre for mathematics and physics), retiring because of mandatory age requirements. From 2009–2014, he was the William W. S. Claytor Endowed Professor of Mathematics at Grambling State University in Louisiana.
Dr. Kuku’s first publications were “Some algebraic K-theoretic applications of the LF and NF functors” (1973), “Whitehead group of orders in p-adic semi-simple algebras” (1973) and “S finiteness theorems in the K-theory of orders in p-adic algebras” (1976). For the next forty years, he worked in various aspects of algebraic K-theory, with connections to commutative and non-commutative algebra, number theory, geometry, and representation theory. Algebraic K-Theory is a contemporary and multidisciplinary subject that has applications in mathematical physics, dynamical systems, econometrics, and control theory. Altogether, he produced over 75 publications including research articles, 10 books/monographs, and articles on issues in STEM. Professor Kuku’s first book was Abstract algebra (1980). He also published the books (with E Thoma and J H Rawnsley) Group Representations and its Applications (1985), Basic Commutative Algebra (1997), Topics in Algebraic K-theory (1997), and Representation Theory and Higher Algebraic K-theory (2007), as well as other books.
The author first met Dr. Bass and Dr. Kuku in Africa where all three presented at COPAM, the Fourth Pan African Congress of Mathematicians, Sept. 18–26, 1995 in Ifrane, Morocco. After which, Professor Kuku and the author became professional and personal friends.
Professor Kuku held many visiting positions at highly reputable universities and research centers in the USA, Canada, Europe, Hong Kong, and China, including the following: Member, Institute for Advanced Study, Sept. 2003–Aug. 2004; Visiting Research Professor, MSRI, Aug.–Dec. 2004; Visiting Professor, The Ohio State University, 2005; Distinguished Visiting Professor, Miami University, Oxford, OH, 2005–2006; Visiting Professor, Universitat Bielefeld, Germany, 2006; Visiting Professor, IHES, Paris, France, 2006; Visiting Professor, Max Planck Inst. Fur Mathematik, Bonn, Germany, 2007; Visiting Professor, University of Iowa, 2007–2008; Distinguished Visiting Professor of Mathematics, Institut de Mathematiques et de Sciences Physiques, Porto Novo, Benin Republic, Nov.–Dec. 2015; Distinguished Professor of Mathematics, National Mathematical Center, Abuja, Nigeria, 2015.
He gave numerous invited lectures and organized conferences/workshops/symposia at many places, including: University of California, Berkeley, 1992; Columbia University, 1971, 1993; Cornell University, 1982, 1993; University of Chicago, 1975, 1982, 1992, 2004; Dartmouth College, 1993, 2001, 2004; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1975, 1982; University of Michigan, 1992; Michigan State University, 1992; Howard University, 1982, 1994, 2003; LA State University, 2012; University of Oklahoma (Karcher Lecturer), 1982; Northwestern University, 1975, 1982; North Dakota State University, 1994; Kansas State University (Virginia Chatelain Endowed Lecture), 2007: Penn State University, 1993, 2004; Rutgers University, 2004; SUNY Binghamton, 1993; University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1992; New Mexico State University, 1996; University of Texas at San Antonio, 2006; Miami University, Oxford, OH, 2005; Atlanta University Centre, 1993; Yale University, 1993; Max-Planck Institute fur Mathematik, Bonn, 1994, 2007; Universite Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, 1998; University of Poznan, Banach Centre, Warsaw, 2002; Universities of Goteborg, Uppsala, Lund, 1993; Institut Mitag-Leffler, Stockholm, 1993; University of Warwick, 1982; University of London, 1981; University of Sussex, 1995; University of Edinburgh, 1995; University of Nijmegen, 1994; Moscow State University, 2005; University of Lausanne, 1996; University of Ljubljana, 1999; Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, 1982, 1993; University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, 2001; University of Hong Kong, 1993; University di Genova, 1996; University of Singapore, 1985; Institute of Math/Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, 1993; East China Normal University Shanghai, 1993; Northwestern Polytechnical University of Xian, 2002; Nanjing University, 2002; Tongji University, Shanghai, 2002; Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi, 2002; Instituto de Matematicas, Unidad Morella, Mexico, 2005; University of Buenos Aires, 2013; Sheriff University of Technology, Tehran, 2000; University of West Indies at Kingston, Jamaica, 1993; University of Technology, LAE, Papua New Guinea, 2013; Universities of Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, 1986, 1987, 1990, 1995; Dakar, Senegal, 1987, 1989; Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, 1997; Yaoundé, Cameroon, 1990, 1992; Brazzaville, Congo, 1987, 1989; Nairobi, Kenya, 1986, 1991; and several universities in Nigeria; Universities of Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Stellenbosch, Pretoria; University of Natal, Pietermaritsburg; University of Witswatersrand, Johannesburg; University of Western Cape, Bellville; University of the North, Pietersburg; University of the Free State, Bloemfontein; Rand Afrikaans University, Johannesburg; Rhodes University, Grahamstown, all in 1997. He also delivered special invited addresses at meetings of mathematical societies including: American Mathematical Society; Canadian Mathematical Society; Mathematical Association of America; National Association of Mathematicians; Hong Kong Mathematics Society Annual Lecture, 1993.
Professor Kuku received many honors for his outstanding contributions. He was selected to be President of the African Mathematical Union, 1986–95; Member of the International Mathematical Union Commission on Development and Exchange, 1986–94; Vice Chairman, First Congress of African Scientists, Brazzaville, 1987; President of the African Academy of Science, 2014–2017; Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, 2012; Fellow of The World Academy of Sciences, 1989; European Academy of Arts, Science and Humanities, 1986; African Academy of Sciences, 1986; Nigerian Academy of Sciences Foreign fellow, 1989; Mongolian Academy of Sciences, 2005; Honorary President African Mathematical Union, 1995; Fellow of the Mathematical Association of Nigeria, 1987; Nigeria National Honors Officer of the Order of the Niger, 2008; Nigerian National Order of Merit, 2009 (the highest honor in Nigeria for academic excellence); Distinguished Visitor, South African Mathematics Society, 1997; Traditional Royal Title—Otunba Ofiran of Ijebu-land, Nigeria, 1993; African Mathematical Union medal, 2000; Chairman, Mathematics Section, Science Association of Nigeria, 1978–1981; Member of Council, Nigerian Mathematical Society, 1985–1990; Member of Council, Mathematical Association of Nigeria, 1987–1991.
An international conference on “Algebraic K-theory and its applications” March 17–21, 2011, was organized by Nanjing University, China in honor of his 70th birthday, and the Proceedings of the Conference were published in a special issue of the Journal of K-theory, Volume 12, no. 1, published by Cambridge University Press.
The photo (Houston, Texas, 2019) was the last in-person visit the author had with Professor Kuku. We both made presentations at the NAM 2019 Faculty Conference on Research and Teaching Excellence. Professor Kuku was an active and cherished Life Member of NAM for two decades.
Professor Kuku contributed immensely to the academic and administrative development of the University of Ibadan, earning the University’s International Distinction in Academia. Professor Kuku’s large mathematical footprint remains indelible and perpetually inspiring. He was a globally respected mathematician in algebraic K-theory. His presence and stimulating contributions will be very much missed. However, his publications and other contributions will forever remind us of his diligence, his scholarship, and his brilliance. Professor Aderemi Oluyomi Kuku will be forever remembered by those who knew him.
References
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- J. L. Houston, My Global Journey, 2021 (Monograph).
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- J. L. Houston, The History of NAM. 1969–1999, 2000.
Credits
Figure 1 is courtesy of Johnny L. Houston.
Figure 2 is courtesy of Daily Post, Nigeria.
Figures 3–7 are courtesy of the J. L. Houston African Americans Database and Photo Gallery.
Author photo is courtesy of Johnny L. Houston.