George Kempf

'One of the things that distinguished his work was the total mastery with which he used higher cohomology. A paper which, I believe, every new student of algebraic geometry should read, is his elementary proof of the Riemann-Roch theorem on curves: “Algebraic Curves” in Crelle, 1977. That such an old result could be treated with new insight was the work of a master.' – David Mumford

'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 W r {\displaystyle W_{r}} of the Jacobian of a curve obtained by adding the curve to itself r {\displaystyle r} times inside its Jacobian. 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 r {\displaystyle r} -fold symmetric product of the curve to the Jacobian. In his thesis he gave a determinantal representation both of W r {\displaystyle W_{r}} and of its tangent cone at all its singular points, which gives you a complete understanding of the nature of these singularities' – David Mumford

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.