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William Thurston
Sign in to saveAlso known as William Paul Thurston, William P. Thurston
American mathematician (1946–2012)
OverviewAI-generated
William Paul Thurston (1946–2012) was an American mathematician and topologist. He was born in Washington, D.C., and died in Rochester from cancer. Thurston served as a university teacher at Princeton University, the University of California, Davis, the University of California, Berkeley, and Cornell University. He was educated at the University of California, Berkeley, and New College of Florida, where Morris Hirsch was his doctoral advisor. His doctoral students included Oded Schramm, David Gabai, Richard Kenyon, and Benson Farb.
Thurston was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He spoke English and had an Erdős number of 2. His work focused on topology and mathematics. He is recognized in the American Academy Arts Sciences collection.
Synthesized by Vinony from 35 facts across 7 sources: Wikidata, Open Library, Crossref, MusicBrainz, Wikiquote, Vinony collections, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.
Person · Open Library
- Born
- 1861
- Works
- 10
Top works
- Socialism and primitive Christianity
- The tragedy of Shakespeare and the tragedy of Ibsen
- The moral basis of the demand for free divorce
- Love's freedom and fulfilment
- Is humanity hungering for God?
via Open Library + Wikidata
Music · MusicBrainz
- Type
- Person
- Gender
- Male
- Origin
- United States
- Active from
- 1958-07-25
Discography
via MusicBrainz · CC0
Recent publications · Crossref
5 total works indexed
- VMD: Visual molecular dynamics
· 1996 · cited 62,917x
- Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure
· 1976 · cited 44,815x
- Comparison of simple potential functions for simulating liquid water
· 1983 · cited 39,536x
- QIIME allows analysis of high-throughput community sequencing data
· 2010 · cited 30,945x
- Preparation of Graphitic Oxide
· 1958 · cited 28,681x
via Crossref · CC0
Quotes
- “Mathematics is a process of staring hard enough with enough perseverence at at the fog of muddle and confusion to eventually break through to improved clarity. I'm happy when I can admit, at least to myself, that my thinking is muddled, and I try to overcome the embarrassment that I might reveal ignorance or confusion.Over the years, this has helped me develop clarity in some things, but I remain muddled in many others.”
- “Mathematics is primarily a tool for human thought.”
- “The most important thing about mathematics is how it resides in the human brain.”
- “People can be fooled into thinking of mathematics as logical, formal, symbolic reasoning. But this is far from reality...computers are far better at formal computation and formal reasoning, but humans are far better mathematicians.”
- “When mathematics is explained, formalized and written down, there is a strong tendency to favor symbolic modes of thought at the expense of everything else, because symbols are easier to write and more standardized than other modes of reasoning. But when mathematics loses its connection to our minds, it dissolves into a haze.”
- “The term `geometry'...refers to a pattern of processing within our brains related to our spatial and visual senses, more than it refers to a separate content area of mathematics.”
via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA
Key facts
- Born
- William Paul Thurston , ( 1946-10-30 ) October 30, 1946, Washington, D.C. , U.S.
- Died
- August 21, 2012 (2012-08-21) (aged 65), Rochester , New York, U.S.
- Alma mater
- New College of Florida , University of California, Berkeley
- Known for
- Thurston's geometrization conjecture , Thurston's 24 questions , Thurston's theory of surfaces , Milnor–Thurston kneading theory , Orbifold , And many other concepts (linked at See also section )
- Awards
- Fields Medal (1982), Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry (1976), Alan T. Waterman Award (1979), National Academy of Sciences (1983), Doob Prize (2005), Leroy P. Steele Prize (2012).
- Fields
- Mathematics
- Institutions
- Cornell University , University of California, Davis , Mathematical Sciences Research Institute , University of California, Berkeley , Princeton University , Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Institute for Advanced Study
- Thesis
- Foliations of three-manifolds which are circle bundles (1972)
- Doctoral advisor
- Morris Hirsch
- Doctoral students
- Danny Calegari , Richard Canary , Benson Farb , David Gabai , William Goldman , Richard Kenyon , Steven Kerckhoff , Yair Minsky , Igor Rivin , Oded Schramm , Richard Schwartz , Jeffrey Weeks
via Wikipedia infobox
~12 min read
Encyclopedic overview
William Paul Thurston (October 30, 1946 – August 21, 2012) was an American mathematician. He was a pioneer in the field of low-dimensional topology and was awarded the Fields Medal in 1982 for his contributions to the study of 3-manifolds.
Thurston was a professor of mathematics at Princeton University, University of California, Davis, and Cornell University. He was also a director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “William Thurston” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.