2016 Breakthrough Prize and New Horizons in Mathematics Prizes Awarded
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CURRICULUM VITAE David Gabai EDUCATION Ph.D. Mathematics
CURRICULUM VITAE David Gabai EDUCATION Ph.D. Mathematics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ June 1980 M.A. Mathematics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ June 1977 B.S. Mathematics, M.I.T., Cambridge, MA June 1976 Ph.D. Advisor William P. Thurston POSITIONS 1980-1981 NSF Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University 1981-1983 Benjamin Pierce Assistant Professor, Harvard University 1983-1986 Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania 1986-1988 Associate Professor, California Institute of Technology 1988-2001 Professor of Mathematics, California Institute of Technology 2001- Professor of Mathematics, Princeton University 2012-2019 Chair, Department of Mathematics, Princeton University 2009- Hughes-Rogers Professor of Mathematics, Princeton University VISITING POSITIONS 1982-1983 Member, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ 1984-1985 Postdoctoral Fellow, Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, Berkeley, CA 1985-1986 Member, IHES, France Fall 1989 Member, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ Spring 1993 Visiting Fellow, Mathematics Institute University of Warwick, Warwick England June 1994 Professor Invité, Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse France 1996-1997 Research Professor, MSRI, Berkeley, CA August 1998 Member, Morningside Research Center, Beijing China Spring 2004 Visitor, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ Spring 2007 Member, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ 2015-2016 Member, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ Fall 2019 Visitor, Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford Spring 2020 -
Mechanical Aspire
Newsletter Volume 6, Issue 11, November 2016 Mechanical Aspire Achievements in Sports, Projects, Industry, Research and Education All About Nobel Prize- Part 35 The Breakthrough Prize Inspired by Nobel Prize, there have been many other prizes similar to that, both in amount and in purpose. One such prize is the Breakthrough Prize. The Breakthrough Prize is backed by Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and Google co-founder Sergey Brin, among others. The Breakthrough Prize was founded by Brin and Anne Wojcicki, who runs genetic testing firm 23andMe, Chinese businessman Jack Ma, and Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner and his wife Julia. The Breakthrough Prizes honor important, primarily recent, achievements in the categories of Fundamental Physics, Life Sciences and Mathematics . The prizes were founded in 2012 by Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Jack Ma and Cathy Zhang. Committees of previous laureates choose the winners from candidates nominated in a process that’s online and open to the public. Laureates receive $3 million each in prize money. They attend a televised award ceremony designed to celebrate their achievements and inspire the next generation of scientists. As part of the ceremony schedule, they also engage in a program of lectures and discussions. Those that go on to make fresh discoveries remain eligible for future Breakthrough Prizes. The Trophy The Breakthrough Prize trophy was created by Olafur Eliasson. “The whole idea for me started out with, ‘Where do these great ideas come from? What type of intuition started the trajectory that eventually becomes what we celebrate today?’” Like much of Eliasson's work, the sculpture explores the common ground between art and science. -
Mathematics Calendar
Mathematics Calendar Please submit conference information for the Mathematics Calendar through the Mathematics Calendar submission form at http:// www.ams.org/cgi-bin/mathcal-submit.pl. The most comprehensive and up-to-date Mathematics Calendar information is available on the AMS website at http://www.ams.org/mathcal/. June 2014 Information: http://www.tesol.org/attend-and-learn/ online-courses-seminars/esl-for-the-secondary- 1–7 Modern Time-Frequency Analysis, Strobl, Austria. (Apr. 2013, mathematics-teacher. p. 429) * 2–30 Algorithmic Randomness, Institute for Mathematical Sciences, 2–5 WSCG 2014 - 22nd International Conference on Computer National University of Singapore, Singapore. Graphics, Visualization and Computer Vision 2014, Primavera Description: Activities 1. Informal Collaboration: June 2–8, 2014. 2. Hotel and Congress Centrum, Plzen (close to Prague), Czech Repub- Ninth International Conference on Computability, Complexity and lic. (Jan. 2014, p. 90) Randomness (CCR 2014): June 9–13, 2014. The conference series 2–6 AIM Workshop: Descriptive inner model theory, American “Computability, Complexity and Randomness” is centered on devel- Institute of Mathematics, Palo Alto, California. (Mar. 2014, p. 312) opments in Algorithmic Randomness, and the conference CCR 2014 2–6 Computational Nonlinear Algebra, Institute for Computational will be part of the IMS programme. The CCR has previously been held and Experimental Research in Mathematics, (ICERM), Brown Univer- in Cordoba 2004, in Buenos Aires 2007, in Nanjing 2008, in Luminy sity, Providence, Rhode Island. (Nov. 2013, p. 1398) 2009, in Notre Dame 2010, in Cape Town 2011, in Cambridge 2012, and in Moscow 2013; it will be held in Heidelberg 2015. 3. Informal 2–6 Conference on Ulam’s type stability, Rytro, Poland. -
Spring 2014 Fine Letters
Spring 2014 Issue 3 Department of Mathematics Department of Mathematics Princeton University Fine Hall, Washington Rd. Princeton, NJ 08544 Department Chair’s letter The department is continuing its period of Assistant to the Chair and to the Depart- transition and renewal. Although long- ment Manager, and Will Crow as Faculty The Wolf time faculty members John Conway and Assistant. The uniform opinion of the Ed Nelson became emeriti last July, we faculty and staff is that we made great Prize for look forward to many years of Ed being choices. Peter amongst us and for John continuing to hold Among major faculty honors Alice Chang Sarnak court in his “office” in the nook across from became a member of the Academia Sinica, Professor Peter Sarnak will be awarded this the common room. We are extremely Elliott Lieb became a Foreign Member of year’s Wolf Prize in Mathematics. delighted that Fernando Coda Marques and the Royal Society, John Mather won the The prize is awarded annually by the Wolf Assaf Naor (last Fall’s Minerva Lecturer) Brouwer Prize, Sophie Morel won the in- Foundation in the fields of agriculture, will be joining us as full professors in augural AWM-Microsoft Research prize in chemistry, mathematics, medicine, physics, Alumni , faculty, students, friends, connect with us, write to us at September. Algebra and Number Theory, Peter Sarnak and the arts. The award will be presented Our finishing graduate students did very won the Wolf Prize, and Yasha Sinai the by Israeli President Shimon Peres on June [email protected] well on the job market with four win- Abel Prize. -
3-Manifold Groups
3-Manifold Groups Matthias Aschenbrenner Stefan Friedl Henry Wilton University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA E-mail address: [email protected] Fakultat¨ fur¨ Mathematik, Universitat¨ Regensburg, Germany E-mail address: [email protected] Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics, Cam- bridge University, United Kingdom E-mail address: [email protected] Abstract. We summarize properties of 3-manifold groups, with a particular focus on the consequences of the recent results of Ian Agol, Jeremy Kahn, Vladimir Markovic and Dani Wise. Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1. Decomposition Theorems 7 1.1. Topological and smooth 3-manifolds 7 1.2. The Prime Decomposition Theorem 8 1.3. The Loop Theorem and the Sphere Theorem 9 1.4. Preliminary observations about 3-manifold groups 10 1.5. Seifert fibered manifolds 11 1.6. The JSJ-Decomposition Theorem 14 1.7. The Geometrization Theorem 16 1.8. Geometric 3-manifolds 20 1.9. The Geometric Decomposition Theorem 21 1.10. The Geometrization Theorem for fibered 3-manifolds 24 1.11. 3-manifolds with (virtually) solvable fundamental group 26 Chapter 2. The Classification of 3-Manifolds by their Fundamental Groups 29 2.1. Closed 3-manifolds and fundamental groups 29 2.2. Peripheral structures and 3-manifolds with boundary 31 2.3. Submanifolds and subgroups 32 2.4. Properties of 3-manifolds and their fundamental groups 32 2.5. Centralizers 35 Chapter 3. 3-manifold groups after Geometrization 41 3.1. Definitions and conventions 42 3.2. Justifications 45 3.3. Additional results and implications 59 Chapter 4. The Work of Agol, Kahn{Markovic, and Wise 63 4.1. -
Floer Homology, Gauge Theory, and Low-Dimensional Topology
Floer Homology, Gauge Theory, and Low-Dimensional Topology Clay Mathematics Proceedings Volume 5 Floer Homology, Gauge Theory, and Low-Dimensional Topology Proceedings of the Clay Mathematics Institute 2004 Summer School Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics Budapest, Hungary June 5–26, 2004 David A. Ellwood Peter S. Ozsváth András I. Stipsicz Zoltán Szabó Editors American Mathematical Society Clay Mathematics Institute 2000 Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary 57R17, 57R55, 57R57, 57R58, 53D05, 53D40, 57M27, 14J26. The cover illustrates a Kinoshita-Terasaka knot (a knot with trivial Alexander polyno- mial), and two Kauffman states. These states represent the two generators of the Heegaard Floer homology of the knot in its topmost filtration level. The fact that these elements are homologically non-trivial can be used to show that the Seifert genus of this knot is two, a result first proved by David Gabai. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Clay Mathematics Institute. Summer School (2004 : Budapest, Hungary) Floer homology, gauge theory, and low-dimensional topology : proceedings of the Clay Mathe- matics Institute 2004 Summer School, Alfr´ed R´enyi Institute of Mathematics, Budapest, Hungary, June 5–26, 2004 / David A. Ellwood ...[et al.], editors. p. cm. — (Clay mathematics proceedings, ISSN 1534-6455 ; v. 5) ISBN 0-8218-3845-8 (alk. paper) 1. Low-dimensional topology—Congresses. 2. Symplectic geometry—Congresses. 3. Homol- ogy theory—Congresses. 4. Gauge fields (Physics)—Congresses. I. Ellwood, D. (David), 1966– II. Title. III. Series. QA612.14.C55 2004 514.22—dc22 2006042815 Copying and reprinting. Material in this book may be reproduced by any means for educa- tional and scientific purposes without fee or permission with the exception of reproduction by ser- vices that collect fees for delivery of documents and provided that the customary acknowledgment of the source is given. -
Meetings & Conferences of The
Meetings & Conferences of the AMS IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING MEETINGS PROGRAMS: AMS Sectional Meeting programs do not appear in the print version of the Notices. However, comprehensive and continually updated meeting and program information with links to the abstract for each talk can be found on the AMS website. See http://www.ams.org/meetings/. Final programs for Sectional Meetings will be archived on the AMS website accessible from the stated URL and in an electronic issue of the Notices as noted below for each meeting. abstract submission form found at http://www.ams.org/ Knoxville, Tennessee cgi-bin/abstracts/abstract.pl. University of Tennessee, Knoxville Algebraic Methods in Graph Theory and Combinator- ics (Code: SS 7A), Felix Lazebnik, University of Delaware, March 21–23, 2014 Andrew Woldar, Villanova University, and Bangteng Xu, Friday – Sunday Eastern Kentucky University. Arithmetic of Algebraic Curves (Code: SS 9A), Lubjana Meeting #1097 Beshaj, Oakland University, Caleb Shor, Western New Eng- Southeastern Section land University, and Andreas Malmendier, Colby College. Associate secretary: Brian D. Boe Commutative Ring Theory (in honor of the retirement Announcement issue of Notices: January 2014 of David E. Dobbs) (Code: SS 1A), David Anderson, Uni- Program first available on AMS website: February 6, 2014 versity of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Jay Shapiro, George Program issue of electronic Notices: March 2014 Mason University. Issue of Abstracts: Volume 35, Issue 2 Completely Integrable Systems and Dispersive Nonlinear Deadlines Equations (Code: SS 12A), Robert Buckingham, University of Cincinnati, and Peter Perry, University of Kentucky. For organizers: Expired Complex Analysis, Probability, and Metric Geometry For abstracts: January 28, 2014 (Code: SS 11A), Matthew Badger, Stony Brook University, Jim Gill, St. -
On the Kinematic Formula in the Lives of the Saints Danny Calegari
SHORT STORIES On the Kinematic Formula in the Lives of the Saints Danny Calegari Saint Sebastian was an early Christian martyr. He served as a captain in the Praetorian Guard under Diocletian un- til his religious faith was discovered, at which point he was taken to a field, bound to a stake, and shot by archers “till he was as full of arrows as an urchin1 is full of pricks2.” Rather miraculously, he made a full recovery, but was later executed anyway for insulting the emperor. The trans- pierced saint became a popular subject for Renaissance painters, e.g., Figure 1. The arrows in Mantegna’s painting have apparently ar- rived from all directions, though they are conspicuously grouped around the legs and groin, almost completely missing the thorax. Intuitively, we should expect more ar- rows in the parts of the body that present a bigger cross section. This intuition is formalized by the claim that a subset of the surface of Saint Sebastian has an area pro- portional to its expected number of intersections with a random line (i.e., arrow). Since both area and expectation are additive, we may reduce the claim (by polygonal ap- proximation and limit) to the case of a flat triangular Saint Sebastian, in which case it is obvious. Danny Calegari is a professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago. His Figure 1. Andrea Mantegna’s painting of Saint Sebastian. email address is [email protected]. 1 hedgehog This is a 3-dimensional version of the classical Crofton 2quills formula, which says that the length of a plane curve is pro- For permission to reprint this article, please contact: portional to its expected number of intersections with a [email protected]. -
Groups of PL Homeomorphisms of Cubes
GROUPS OF PL HOMEOMORPHISMS OF CUBES DANNY CALEGARI AND DALE ROLFSEN D´edi´e`aMichel Boileau sur son soixanti`eme anniversaire. Sant´e! Abstract. We study algebraic properties of groups of PL or smooth homeo- morphisms of unit cubes in any dimension, fixed pointwise on the boundary, and more generally PL or smooth groups acting on manifolds and fixing point- wise a submanifold of codimension 1 (resp. codimension 2), and show that such groups are locally indicable (resp. circularly orderable). We also give many examples of interesting groups that can act, and discuss some other algebraic constraints that such groups must satisfy, including the fact that a group of PL homeomorphisms of the n-cube (fixed pointwise on the boundary) contains no elements that are more than exponentially distorted. 1. Introduction We are concerned in this paper with algebraic properties of the group of PL homeomorphisms of a PL manifold, fixed on some PL submanifold (usually of codimension 1 or 2, for instance the boundary) and some of its subgroups (usually those preserving some structure). The most important case is the group of PL homeomorphisms of In fixed pointwise on ∂In; hence these are “groups of PL homeomorphisms of the (n-)cube”. The algebraic study of transformation groups (often in low dimension, or preserv- ing some extra structure such as a symplectic or complex structure) has recently seen a lot of activity; however, much of this activity has been confined to the smooth category. It is striking that many of these results can be transplanted to the PL category. This interest is further strengthened by the possibility of working in the PL category over (real) algebraic rings or fields (this possibility has already been exploited in dimension 1, in the groups F and T of Richard Thompson). -
January 2013 Prizes and Awards
January 2013 Prizes and Awards 4:25 P.M., Thursday, January 10, 2013 PROGRAM SUMMARY OF AWARDS OPENING REMARKS FOR AMS Eric Friedlander, President LEVI L. CONANT PRIZE: JOHN BAEZ, JOHN HUERTA American Mathematical Society E. H. MOORE RESEARCH ARTICLE PRIZE: MICHAEL LARSEN, RICHARD PINK DEBORAH AND FRANKLIN TEPPER HAIMO AWARDS FOR DISTINGUISHED COLLEGE OR UNIVERSITY DAVID P. ROBBINS PRIZE: ALEXANDER RAZBOROV TEACHING OF MATHEMATICS RUTH LYTTLE SATTER PRIZE IN MATHEMATICS: MARYAM MIRZAKHANI Mathematical Association of America LEROY P. STEELE PRIZE FOR LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT: YAKOV SINAI EULER BOOK PRIZE LEROY P. STEELE PRIZE FOR MATHEMATICAL EXPOSITION: JOHN GUCKENHEIMER, PHILIP HOLMES Mathematical Association of America LEROY P. STEELE PRIZE FOR SEMINAL CONTRIBUTION TO RESEARCH: SAHARON SHELAH LEVI L. CONANT PRIZE OSWALD VEBLEN PRIZE IN GEOMETRY: IAN AGOL, DANIEL WISE American Mathematical Society DAVID P. ROBBINS PRIZE FOR AMS-SIAM American Mathematical Society NORBERT WIENER PRIZE IN APPLIED MATHEMATICS: ANDREW J. MAJDA OSWALD VEBLEN PRIZE IN GEOMETRY FOR AMS-MAA-SIAM American Mathematical Society FRANK AND BRENNIE MORGAN PRIZE FOR OUTSTANDING RESEARCH IN MATHEMATICS BY ALICE T. SCHAFER PRIZE FOR EXCELLENCE IN MATHEMATICS BY AN UNDERGRADUATE WOMAN AN UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT: FAN WEI Association for Women in Mathematics FOR AWM LOUISE HAY AWARD FOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO MATHEMATICS EDUCATION LOUISE HAY AWARD FOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO MATHEMATICS EDUCATION: AMY COHEN Association for Women in Mathematics M. GWENETH HUMPHREYS AWARD FOR MENTORSHIP OF UNDERGRADUATE -
Commentary on Thurston's Work on Foliations
COMMENTARY ON FOLIATIONS* Quoting Thurston's definition of foliation [F11]. \Given a large supply of some sort of fabric, what kinds of manifolds can be made from it, in a way that the patterns match up along the seams? This is a very general question, which has been studied by diverse means in differential topology and differential geometry. ... A foliation is a manifold made out of striped fabric - with infintely thin stripes, having no space between them. The complete stripes, or leaves, of the foliation are submanifolds; if the leaves have codimension k, the foliation is called a codimension k foliation. In order that a manifold admit a codimension- k foliation, it must have a plane field of dimension (n − k)." Such a foliation is called an (n − k)-dimensional foliation. The first definitive result in the subject, the so called Frobenius integrability theorem [Fr], concerns a necessary and sufficient condition for a plane field to be the tangent field of a foliation. See [Spi] Chapter 6 for a modern treatment. As Frobenius himself notes [Sa], a first proof was given by Deahna [De]. While this work was published in 1840, it took another hundred years before a geometric/topological theory of foliations was introduced. This was pioneered by Ehresmann and Reeb in a series of Comptes Rendus papers starting with [ER] that was quickly followed by Reeb's foundational 1948 thesis [Re1]. See Haefliger [Ha4] for a detailed account of developments in this period. Reeb [Re1] himself notes that the 1-dimensional theory had already undergone considerable development through the work of Poincare [P], Bendixson [Be], Kaplan [Ka] and others. -
Department of Mathematics
Department of Mathematics The Department of Mathematics seeks to maintain its top ranking in mathematics research and education in the United States. The department is a key part of MIT’s educational mission at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and produces the most sought-after young researchers. Key to the department’s success is recruitment of the best faculty members, postdoctoral associates, and graduate students in an ever more competitive environment. The department strives to be diverse at all levels in terms of race, gender, and ethnicity. It continues to serve the varied needs of its graduate students, undergraduate students majoring in mathematics, and the broader MIT community. Awards and Honors The faculty received numerous distinctions this year. Professor Victor Kac received the Leroy P. Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement, for “groundbreaking contributions to Lie Theory and its applications to Mathematics and Mathematical Physics.” Larry Guth (together with Netz Katz of the California Institute of Technology) won the Clay Mathematics Institute Research Award. Tomasz Mrowka was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences and William Minicozzi was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Alexei Borodin received the 2015 Loève Prize in Probability, given by the University of California, Berkeley, in recognition of outstanding research in mathematical probability by a young researcher. Alan Edelman received the 2015 Babbage Award, given at the IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, for exceptional contributions to the field of parallel processing. Bonnie Berger was elected vice president of the International Society for Computational Biology.