William Thurston

William Paul Thurston (October 30, 1946 – August 21, 2012) was an American mathematician. He made big discoveries in a special part of math called low-dimensional topology. Because of his amazing work, he received a very important award called the Fields Medal in 1982. This award is given to mathematicians for their big ideas about 3-manifolds.

Thurston taught math at famous schools like Princeton University, University of California, Davis, and Cornell University. He also helped lead a place for math research called the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. His work helped other mathematicians solve tough problems and understand shapes in new ways.

Early life and education

William Thurston was born in Washington, D.C.. His mother, Margaret, was a seamstress, and his father, Paul, was an aeronautical engineer. As a child, William had trouble with his eyes, which made it hard for him to see depth. His mother helped him practice seeing three-dimensional objects from flat pictures.

He earned his bachelor's degree from New College in 1967. Later, he completed his doctorate in mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley in 1972.

Career

After finishing his studies, Thurston worked at the Institute for Advanced Study and then at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a teacher.

In 1974, Thurston became a professor at Princeton University. Later, he taught at Berkeley and was the leader of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. He also worked at UC Davis and then moved to Cornell University.

Thurston helped bring computers into mathematics research and inspired a program called SnapPea. During his time leading the research institute, new learning programs were started that many places now use.

Research

William Thurston did important work in a part of math called foliation theory in the early 1970s. He solved many hard problems in this area, which made other mathematicians lose interest because he answered so many questions.

Later, starting in the mid-1970s, Thurston showed that hyperbolic geometry was very important for understanding shapes in three dimensions, called 3-manifolds. He proved many theorems about these shapes, showing that many of them have a special hyperbolic structure. His ideas led to the geometrization conjecture, which describes how all 3-manifolds can be broken into simpler pieces with specific geometries. This conjecture was later proven by another mathematician named Grigori Perelman.

Awards and honors

William Thurston received many important awards for his work. In 1976, he and James Harris Simons shared the Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry.

In 1982, Thurston was given the Fields Medal for changing the way we study shapes in two and three dimensions. Later, in 2005, he won a special book prize for his work on three-dimensional geometry and topology. In 2012, he received another award for his important contributions to research.

Personal life

William Thurston had three children with his first wife, Rachel Findley, named Dylan, Nathaniel, and Emily. Dylan is a mathematician at Boston College. Thurston also had two more children, Hannah Jade and Liam, with his second wife, Julian Muriel Thurston.

Thurston passed away on August 21, 2012, in Rochester, New York.

Selected publications

William Thurston wrote many important books and papers about math. Some of his well-known works include:

• The geometry and topology of three-manifolds
• Three-dimensional geometry and topology, Vol. 1
• Hyperbolic structures on 3-manifolds
• Three-dimensional manifolds, Kleinian groups and hyperbolic geometry
• On the geometry and dynamics of diffeomorphisms of surfaces
• Word Processing in Groups (with other authors)
• Confoliations (with Yakov M. Eliashberg)
• On proof and progress in mathematics
• Mathematical education