Robert Frederick Coleman (November 22 1954 – March 24, 2014) was an American mathematician, and professor at the University of California, Berkeley. After graduating from Nova High School, he completed his bachelor's degree at Harvard University in 1976 and subsequently attended Cambridge University for Part III of the mathematical tripos. While there John H. Coates provided him with a problem for his doctoral thesis ("Division Values in Local Fields"), which he completed at Princeton University in 1979 under the advising of Kenkichi Iwasawa.He then had a one-year postdoctoral appointment at the Institute for Advanced Study and then taught at Harvard University for three years. In 1983, he moved to University of California, Berkeley. In 1985, he was struck with a severe case of multiple sc