chern

http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/senate/inmemoriam/shiingshenchern.htm

I think the improtant source of this is :
This important proof was the forerunner of other invariants which bear his name, Chern classes, Chern-Weil homomorphism and Chern-Simons invariants, which have become essential tools not only in differential geometry but in other areas of mathematics such as topology and algebraic geometry and also mathematical physics. A large part of modern algebraic geometry would not exist without Chern classes.