William paul thurston biography of william hill

William P. Thurston, whose geometric vision revolutionized topology, died August 21 at the age of Within a short span of just a few years at the beginning of his career, Thurston proved so many outstanding results in foliation theory, that the whole area seemed to be finished because he had answered most of the important open problems.

William paul thurston biography of william hill

Then, in the mids, he turned his attention to low-dimensional topology, to which he brought a whole new set of geometric tools, most notably from hyperbolic geometry. (Photo: E. David Luria) Thurston classified surface diffeomorphisms in terms of their dynamical/geometric behavior, and he opened a new perspective on three-manifolds that became known as his geometrization program.

Thurston not only formulated the framework and the crucial conjectures for this geometrization of three-manifolds, but he also proved his conjectures to be true in large classes of important cases. After further contributions by many other mathematici