Mathematical giant Bill Thurston died yesterday.
The proof of the Thurston geometrization conjecture, laid out by Thurston and ultimately proved by Grigori Perelman a few years ago, is a milestone in human intellectual history. It classifies all possible three-dimensional spaces. The proof of the conjecture was marred by a silly controversy (another mathematician named Yau tried to claim credit for it, something extremely rare in mathematics), but the incident did lead to a fantastic New Yorker article.
Corner Stone
tl;dr
/American students
Brachiator
Thanks for bringing this to everyone’s attention. There are some very elegant and thoughtful remembrances of Thurston on the InterTubes.
A tribute by Terence Tao includes a neat video which explains Thurston’s method of everting the sphere. Given all the stupidity erupting in the world recently, it is a welcome balance to acknowledge a beautiful mind.
mathguy
Thurston died? Damn. Just checked the NYT obits, and …nothing. One of the giants of 20th and 21st century mathematics, and some guy that “expanded York College” rates a mention while Thurston doesn’t. Maybe tomorrow.
Corner Stone
What’s amusing is that you just got stepped on by an NRO/Kardashian-equivalent post.
And now no one will never know.
jenn
Thanks! Someone I didn’t know about. That New Yorker article was really interesting – what’s the scuttlebutt in the 6 years since? Yao doubled down on the attention hogging, Perelman still locked away in a Russian attic?
Mike
“Since Euclid” seems strong, but what do I know. He seems to have had a sophisticated approach to mathematics creation and a communitarian one. There are others, but I’d say it’s a pretty individualistic discipline on the whole.
JGabriel
RIP, Bill Thurston.
Laura
Thanks for this post. It’s a sad fact that too many wonderful minds become known to many of us only at the time of their obits.
(And the New Yorker article was fascinating.)
ET
That was a pretty short post that I didn’t understand a word of except that it was a toast to some geeky math dude with epic skills who died.
Omnes Omnibus
Vaguely related: My undergrad faculty adviser just died. RIP Professor Povolny.
divF
In the 1970’s, when I was a grad student in Math at Berkeley, Thurston was often cited as a reason not to exclusively recruit graduate students from the elite math departments, but to cast their net more widely (he was an undergrad at the New College of Florida – then a newly-opened small private liberal arts school).
He was one of two Wunderkinder of the Berkeley math department from the 60’s / early 70’s. The other was Rufus Bowen, who did seminal work in dynamical systems (Bowen died at the tragically young age of 31 in 1978). Berkeley was and is very proud of them, and justifiably so.
On everting the sphere: Smale first proved it was possible in the 1960s, after which there were a number of explicit constructions. Thurston gave a different proof, which comes with a visually beautiful explicit construction (which can be seen as a Geometry Center animation on youtube). A sequence of wire-frame sculptures of one of the earlier constructions hung for many years in the Berkeley Math Department coffee room, then disappeared (stolen, I think).
DougJ
@Mike:
Bear in mind I am research mathematician and know many people in his area.
divF
@DougJ: Me, too (as you’ve probably guessed).
Valdivia
oh thanks for linking to the news. I remember him from the Nyorker story
SiubhanDuinne
@mathguy:
Sooner or later, the NYT usually gets to the brilliant obits. And mark your calendar for the first Sunday in January 2013 — this is exactly the kind of person CBS Sunday Morning likes to remember in their annual “Hail and Farewell” roundups. They note the superstar passings, of course, but mostly they honour people the average Joe has never heard of, but whose life and work is worth a tribute.
So I’m pretty sure there will be public MSM attention paid to Thurston,
marv
This just got me thinking, and it’s probably a really stupid question, but is there an equation, or series of equations, describing the spaces between symbols in an equation?
Mr Stagger Lee
John Nash is still around isn’t he?
DougJ
@Mr Stagger Lee:
Great mathematician, but ain’t the same ballpark, ain’t the same league, ain’t even the same fuckin’ sport.
DougJ
@SiubhanDuinne:
There’s no need to rush. I’d rather a late, excellent obit than a quick dumb one.
DougJ
@divF:
There were also murals he and his friends did on the 7th floor of Evans til recently (as you may know!).
BruinKid
@divF: Huh, you may have met my aunt there. She was one of Parlett’s students. Through her, I met Yau when I was just a little kid.
divF
@DougJ: I was an undergrad when the department moved into Evans, and remember those murals going up quite well.
divF
@BruinKid: If her initials are AG, yes, I know her quite well- we work in the same general area.
@DougJ: I was an undergrad at Berkeley when the math department moved into Evans, and remember the murals being painted.
divF
Hurray! For the first time as a commenter, FYWP !
SiubhanDuinne
@DougJ: Yup, I completely agree. Although I imagine the NYT at least has had the bulk of the Thurston obit prepared for a long time. They’re good about that.
Walker
It is a testament of how busy I was today that I learned about this here, rather than internally at the university.
ADS
Did not know DougJ was a mathematician.
Met Thurston at a talk he gave at Harvard while I was a grad student there. He had dinner with a group of us at a basic dive Chinese restaurant after. Surreal just hanging with one of the ultra-greats.
Steve J.
DougJ –
Thanx for the New Yorker link.
ADS
@DougJ: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/us/william-p-thurston-theoretical-mathematician-dies-at-65.html?_r=1&smid=tw-nytimesscience&seid=auto
am
Dougj, thanks for passing along the sad news. A few years later and I would have had the chance to be an undergrad while he was in Ithaca. Just a terrible shame that he wasn’t able age gracefully into an emeritus position and mentor developing mathematicians.
am
Dougj, as a postscript, I was catching up on what he had been working in the last decade and ran across this post of his on MathOverflow which seems appropriate to post now http://mathoverflow.net/questions/43690/whats-a-mathematician-to-do/44213#44213
mathguy
My one good memory of him was a talk David Gabai gave when I was grad student at Penn in the 80s. I felt like an eavesdropper on a two person conversation between Gabai and Thurston, who was in the audience. It seemed like they were the only people in the room that understood completely what was being discussed (though I doubt that-there were a lot pretty freaking smart people in the room). Thurston’s enthusiasm was contagous; even though I was clueless, I still paid attention.
A.J.
The NYTimes is now carrying an obit for Thurston.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/us/william-p-thurston-theoretical-mathematician-dies-at-65.html
Not bad. But you do have to wonder if the writer experienced any cognitive dissonance in pivoting from claiming that Thurston had the luxury of doing mathematics without practical applications to listing off practical applications.
JR
Really sad. He was more than a famous almunus from New, but regularly cited as an object lesson of the wonders that can come from seeking out what interests you as a student and running with it, which was (and remains) the heart of a New College education.
He will be missed.
Mike
@DougJ:
Duly noted and appreciated, especially considering how esoteric Thurston’s work is, and how few people are qualified to judge it, even among professional mathematicians. Euclid it is possible for lesser mortals to read and appreciate, even some of the deep logic. Also to understand some of his historical import (Spinoza, for example, not to mention 20th century developments).
The Times obit didn’t help with musings about “the shape of the universe” and a fashion line supposedly based on Thurston’s thought. Acknowledgement all the same that real understanding is beyond reach, I suppose.
DougJ
@am:
Thanks!