Ronald John Stern (born 20 January 1947) is a mathematician who works on topology, geometry, and gauge theory.
He is emeritus professor at the University of California, Irvine.Stern was the first in his family to receive a college education and earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois.
He then earned his Ph.D.
in 1973 from the University of California, Los Angeles under the joint supervision of Robert Duncan Edwards (de) and Robert F.
Brown.Before joining the faculty at the University of California, Irvine in 1989, Stern was a professor at the University of Utah and a visiting professor at UCLA and the University of Hawaii.He was an Invited Speaker at the 1998 International Congress of Mathematicians, in Berlin.He is a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society.