John Morgan (mathematician)
Encyclopedia
John Willard Morgan is an American
mathematician
, well known for his contributions to topology
and geometry
. He is currently the director of the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics
at Stony Brook University.
in 1968 and Ph.D.
in 1969, both from Rice University
. His Ph.D. thesis, entitled Stable tangential homotopy equivalences, was written under the supervision of Morton L. Curtis
. He was an instructor at Princeton University
from 1969 to 1972, and an assistant professor at MIT from 1972 to 1974. He has been on the faculty at Columbia University
since 1974. In July 2009, he moved to Stony Brook University to become the first director of the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics
, a research center devoted to the interface between mathematics and physics.
He is an editor of the Journal of the American Mathematical Society
and Geometry and Topology
.
On April 28, 2009 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
in verifying Grigori Perelman
's proof of the Poincaré conjecture
. The Morgan–Tian team was one of three teams formed for this purpose; the other teams were those of Huai-Dong Cao
and Xi-Ping Zhu
, and Bruce Kleiner
and John Lott
. Morgan gave a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians
in Madrid
on August 24, 2006, declaring that "in 2003, Perelman solved the Poincaré Conjecture."
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
mathematician
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
, well known for his contributions to topology
Topology
Topology is a major area of mathematics concerned with properties that are preserved under continuous deformations of objects, such as deformations that involve stretching, but no tearing or gluing...
and geometry
Geometry
Geometry arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers ....
. He is currently the director of the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics
Simons Center for Geometry and Physics
The Simons Center for Geometry and Physics is a center for theoretical physics and mathematics at Stony Brook University in New York. The focus of the center is mathematical physics and the interface of geometry and physics. It was founded in 2007 by a gift from the James and Marilyn Simons...
at Stony Brook University.
Life
He received his B.A.Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
in 1968 and Ph.D.
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
in 1969, both from Rice University
Rice University
William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University or Rice, is a private research university located on a heavily wooded campus in Houston, Texas, United States...
. His Ph.D. thesis, entitled Stable tangential homotopy equivalences, was written under the supervision of Morton L. Curtis
Morton L. Curtis
Morton Landers Curtis was an American mathematician, an expert on group theory and the W. L. Moody, Jr. Professor of Mathematics at Rice University....
. He was an instructor at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
from 1969 to 1972, and an assistant professor at MIT from 1972 to 1974. He has been on the faculty at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
since 1974. In July 2009, he moved to Stony Brook University to become the first director of the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics
Simons Center for Geometry and Physics
The Simons Center for Geometry and Physics is a center for theoretical physics and mathematics at Stony Brook University in New York. The focus of the center is mathematical physics and the interface of geometry and physics. It was founded in 2007 by a gift from the James and Marilyn Simons...
, a research center devoted to the interface between mathematics and physics.
He is an editor of the Journal of the American Mathematical Society
Journal of the American Mathematical Society
The Journal of the American Mathematical Society , is a quarterly, peer reviewed, mathematical journal published by the American Mathematical Society. The editors are Weinan E, Sergey Fomin, Gregory Lawler, John W. Morgan, Karl Rubin, and Terence Tao...
and Geometry and Topology
Geometry and Topology
Geometry & Topology is a peer-refereed, international mathematics research journal devoted to geometry and topology, and their applications...
.
On April 28, 2009 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Work
He collaborated with Gang TianGang Tian
Tian Gang is a Chinese mathematician and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is known for his contributions to geometric analysis and quantum cohomology, among other fields...
in verifying Grigori Perelman
Grigori Perelman
Grigori Yakovlevich Perelman is a Russian mathematician who has made landmark contributions to Riemannian geometry and geometric topology.In 1992, Perelman proved the soul conjecture. In 2002, he proved Thurston's geometrization conjecture...
's proof of the Poincaré conjecture
Poincaré conjecture
In mathematics, the Poincaré conjecture is a theorem about the characterization of the three-dimensional sphere , which is the hypersphere that bounds the unit ball in four-dimensional space...
. The Morgan–Tian team was one of three teams formed for this purpose; the other teams were those of Huai-Dong Cao
Huai-Dong Cao
Huai-Dong Cao is A. Everett Pitcher Professor of Mathematics at Lehigh University. He collaborated with Xi-Ping Zhu of Zhongshan University in verifying Grigori Perelman's proof of the Poincaré conjecture. The Cao–Zhu team is one of three teams formed for this purpose...
and Xi-Ping Zhu
Xi-Ping Zhu
Zhu Xiping is a Professor of Mathematics at Sun Yat-sen University. He collaborated with Cao Huaidong of Lehigh University in verifying Grigori Perelman's proof of the Poincaré conjecture. The Cao–Zhu team was one of three teams formed for this purpose...
, and Bruce Kleiner
Bruce Kleiner
Bruce Alan Kleiner is an American mathematician, working in differential geometry and topology and geometric group theory.He received his Ph.D. in 1990 from the University of California, Berkeley. His advisor was Wu-Yi Hsiang. He is now Professor of Mathematics at New York University.Kleiner has...
and John Lott
John Lott (mathematician)
John Lott is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is working on Ricci flow....
. Morgan gave a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians
International Congress of Mathematicians
The International Congress of Mathematicians is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union ....
in Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
on August 24, 2006, declaring that "in 2003, Perelman solved the Poincaré Conjecture."
Articles
- Pierre DelignePierre Deligne- See also :* Deligne conjecture* Deligne–Mumford moduli space of curves* Deligne–Mumford stacks* Deligne cohomology* Fourier–Deligne transform* Langlands–Deligne local constant- External links :...
, Phillip GriffithsPhillip GriffithsPhillip Griffiths is an American mathematician, known for his work in the field of geometry, and in particular for the complex manifold approach to algebraic geometry. He was a major developer in particular of the theory of variation of Hodge structure in Hodge theory and moduli theory.He received...
, John Morgan, Dennis SullivanDennis SullivanDennis Parnell Sullivan is an American mathematician. He is known for work in topology, both algebraic and geometric, and on dynamical systems. He holds the Albert Einstein Chair at the City University of New York Graduate Center, and is a professor at Stony Brook University.-Work in topology:He...
, Real homotopy theory of Kähler manifolds, Inventiones MathematicaeInventiones MathematicaeInventiones Mathematicae, often just referred to as Inventiones, is a mathematical journal published monthly by Springer Verlag. It was founded in 1966.-Editors:...
29 (1975), no. 3, 245–274. - John W. Morgan, The algebraic topology of smooth algebraic varieties, Publications Mathématiques de l'IHÉSPublications Mathématiques de l'IHÉSPublications Mathématiques de l'IHÉS is a mathematical journal. It is published by Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, with the help of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique....
48 (1978), 137–204. - John W. Morgan, Trees and hyperbolic geometry, Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians, Vol. 1, 2 (Berkeley, CA, 1986), 590–597, Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, RI, 1987.
- John W. Morgan, Zoltán SzabóZoltán SzabóZoltán Szabó is a professor of mathematics at Princeton University. He created, along with Peter Ozsváth, Heegaard Floer homology, a homology theory for 3-manifolds. For this contribution to the field of topology, Ozsváth and Szabó were awarded the 2007 Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry.He got his...
, Clifford Henry TaubesClifford TaubesClifford Henry Taubes is the William Petschek Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University and works in gauge field theory, differential geometry, and low-dimensional topology.-Early career:Taubes received his Ph.D...
, A product formula for the Seiberg-Witten invariants and the generalized Thom conjecture, Journal of Differential Geometry 44 (1996), no. 4, 706–788. - John W. Morgan, Recent progress on the Poincaré conjecture and the classification of 3-manifolds, Bulletin of the American Mathematical SocietyBulletin of the American Mathematical SocietyThe Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society is a quarterly mathematical journal published by the American Mathematical Society...
42 (2005), no. 1, 57–78.
Books
- Phillip A. Griffiths, John W. Morgan, "Rational homotopy theory and differential forms", Progress in Mathematics, vol. 16, Birkhäuser, Boston, MA, 1981. ISBN 3-7643-3041-4
- "The Smith conjectureSmith conjectureIn mathematics, the Smith conjecture states that if f is a diffeomorphism of the 3-sphere, of finite order then the fixed point set of f cannot be a nontrivial knot....
", Papers presented at the symposium held at Columbia University, New York, 1979. Edited by John W. Morgan and Hyman BassHyman BassHyman Bass is an American mathematician, known for work in algebra and in mathematics education. From 1959-1998 he was Professor in the Mathematics Department at Columbia University, where he is now professor emeritus...
. Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 112, Academic PressAcademic PressAcademic Press is an academic book publisher. Originally independent, it was acquired by Harcourt, Brace & World in 1969. Reed Elsevier bought Harcourt in 2000, and Academic Press is now an imprint of Elsevier....
, Orlando, FL, 1984. ISBN 0-12-506980-4 - John W. Morgan, Tomasz Mrowka, Daniel Ruberman, "The L2-moduli space and a vanishing theorem for Donaldson polynomial invariants", Monographs in Geometry and Topology, II. International Press, Cambridge, MA, 1994. ISBN 1-57146-006-3
- Robert Friedman, John W. Morgan, "Smooth four-manifolds and complex surfaces", Ergebnisse der Mathematik und ihrer GrenzgebieteErgebnisse der Mathematik und ihrer GrenzgebieteErgebnisse der Mathematik und ihrer Grenzgebiete/A Series of Modern Surveys in Mathematics is a series of scholarly monographs published by Springer-Verlag. The title literally means "Results in mathematics and related areas". Most of the books were published in German or English, but there were a...
, vol. 27, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1994. ISBN 3-540-57058-6 - John W. Morgan, "The Seiberg-Witten equations and applications to the topology of smooth four-manifolds", Mathematical Notes, vol. 44, Princeton University PressPrinceton University Press-Further reading:* "". Artforum International, 2005.-External links:* * * * *...
, Princeton, NJ, 1996. ISBN 0-691-02597-5
External links
- Home page at Columbia University
- Biographical sketch at the Chinese University of Hong KongChinese University of Hong KongThe Chinese University of Hong Kong is a research-led university in Hong Kong.CUHK is the only tertiary education institution in Hong Kong with Nobel Prize winners on its faculty, including Chen Ning Yang, James Mirrlees, Robert Alexander Mundell and Charles K. Kao...
- Conference in Honor of the 60th Birthday of John Morgan at Columbia University