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In case people have not heard, Bill Thurston died yesterday. The following message was sent by his son, Dylan:
Bill passed away at 8PM on August 21 in Rochester, NY. He was surrounded by family, and went very peacefully, after a fight with melanoma since spring 2011.
Too bad.
[Technical note: I want to move this from Latest Changes to the Atrium, but perhaps you put it here deliberately to allow anonymous comments?]
Very sad indeed. He was not yet 66 years old. I didn’t know him, but I think all who did would unquestionably affirm that he was an authentic genius.
I mostly heard of him through his conjecture about model geometries of 3D manifolds, the one that Perelman proved. That alone would be worth remembering him, and I see that he did more.
Terry Tao has written about Bill Thurston here.
@2 I was not sure where to put this so opted for the most central place. I also was wondering if someone with more knowledge of orbifolds etc, might start a longer entry on his work from the nLab POV. Feel free to put it in the Atrium (I am never certain what should go there!)
The geometrisation resultsfor orbifolds, of more general stuff using surgery?
I was thinking of an entry which linked in many of the current links to his name, and used that as a means to devlope other new entries that could be useful to the balance of the overall lab.
AMS site on Thurston: http://www.ams.org/news?news_id=1602
I have added a few links plus a short stub.
I have added a few links plus a short stub.
Maybe you mean that you added something to the entry William Thurston?
Anyone else who has something to offer, please consider adding it there!
From one of his students
http://lamington.wordpress.com/2012/08/22/bill-thurston-1946-2012
I added a little to his entry. [And moved this to the atrium.]
I added some more to the entry William Thurston.
That entry is beginning to look good in a modest way. Thanks.
I think the phrase
proved by Thurston in special cases, and by Grigori Perelman in complete generality
should better read
proved by Thurston in special cases, and by Richard Hamilton and Grigori Perelman in complete generality
Hamilton was the one who invented the clever proof strategy and completed a good bit of it. Perelman finished the proof by solving a remaining technical problem. I think by all measures that regard mathematics not just as a sport, they proved the conjecture jointly.
My understanding is also that this agrees with Perelman’s view of the situation. As far as I am informed he said that he turned down the Millenium price because he finds it unjust that it was awarded to him alone and not to Hamilton and him together.
Yes, I agree. (But if you look through the edits, it should be clear that my main intent was to give Thurston credit for his part; I wasn’t particularly focusing on Perelman, whose name in connection with the geometrization conjecture had been brought up by someone else.)
Yes, I understand that this is tangential to the entry on Thurston. But if credit for the proof is mentioned there at all, I think it needs to mentioned reasonably.
I have created a stub for geometrization conjecture now. There is a related paragraph already at Poincaré conjecture. Of course that entry is also still mainly a stub.
Once again, we agree. Good that you started the new entry.
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