David Gabai is an American
mathematician and the
Hughes-Rogers Professor of Mathematics at
Princeton University. Focused on
low-dimensional topology
In mathematics, low-dimensional topology is the branch of topology that studies manifolds, or more generally topological spaces, of four or fewer dimensions. Representative topics are the structure theory of 3-manifolds and 4-manifolds, knot theor ...
and
hyperbolic geometry, he is a leading researcher in those subjects.
Biography
David Gabai received his B.S. in mathematics from
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
in 1976 and his Ph.D. in mathematics from
Princeton University in 1980. Gabai completed his doctoral dissertation, titled "Foliations and genera of links", under the supervision of
William Thurston.
After positions at
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher l ...
and
University of Pennsylvania, Gabai spent most of the period of 1986–2001 at
Caltech
The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...
, and has been at Princeton since 2001. Gabai was the Chair of the Department of Mathematics at Princeton University from 2012 to 2019.
Honours and awards
In 2004, David Gabai was awarded the
Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry
__NOTOC__
The Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry is an award granted by the American Mathematical Society for notable research in geometry or topology. It was founded in 1961 in memory of Oswald Veblen. The Veblen Prize is now worth US$5000, and ...
, given every three years by the
American Mathematical Society
The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...
.
He was an invited speaker in the
International Congress of Mathematicians 2010,
Hyderabad
Hyderabad ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana and the ''de jure'' capital of Andhra Pradesh. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River, in the northern part of Southern India. ...
on the topic of
topology.
In 2011, he was elected to the
United States National Academy of Sciences. In 2012, he became a fellow of the
American Mathematical Society
The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...
.
Gabai was elected as a member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...
in 2014.
Work
David Gabai has played a key role in the field of
topology of 3-manifolds in the last three decades. Some of the foundational results he and his collaborators have proved are as follows: Existence of
taut foliation
A taut object is one under tension.
Taut is also a surname, and may refer to:
* Bruno Taut (1880–1938), prolific German architect, urban planner and author
* Max Taut (1884–1967), German architect
Taut may also refer to:
* Tauț, a commun ...
in 3-manifolds,
Property R Conjecture
Property is a system of rights that gives people legal control of valuable things, and also refers to the valuable things themselves. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property may have the right to consume, alter, share, r ...
, foundation of
essential laminations
Essential or essentials may refer to:
Biology
*Essential amino acid, one that the organism cannot produce by itself
Groups and organizations
* EQ Media Group, formerly Essential Media Group, a global television production company
* Essential M ...
,
Seifert fiber space
A Seifert fiber space is a 3-manifold together with a decomposition as a disjoint union of circles. In other words, it is a S^1-bundle (circle bundle) over a 2-dimensional orbifold. Many 3-manifolds are Seifert fiber spaces, and they account for ...
conjecture, rigidity of homotopy hyperbolic 3-manifolds, weak hyperbolization for 3-manifolds with
genuine lamination
Genuine may refer to:
Companies
* Genuine Parts Company, a Fortune 1000 company that was founded in 1928
*Genuine Scooters, a Chicago-based scooter manufacturer
*Genuine Games, a video game company founded in early 2002
Music
* ''Genuine'' ( ...
,
Smale conjecture for hyperbolic 3-manifolds,
Marden's Tameness Conjecture,
Weeks manifold In mathematics, the Weeks manifold, sometimes called the Fomenko–Matveev–Weeks manifold, is a closed hyperbolic 3-manifold obtained by (5, 2) and (5, 1) Dehn surgeries on the Whitehead link. It has volume approximately equal to 0.9 ...
being the minimum volume closed
hyperbolic 3-manifold.
Selected works
* ''Foliations and the topology of 3-manifolds''; I: ''
J. Differential Geom.'' 18 (1983), no. 3, 445–503; II: J. Differential Geom. 26 (1987), no. 3, 461–478; III: J. Differential Geom. 26 (1987), no. 3, 479–536.
* with U. Oertel: ''Essential laminations in 3-manifolds'', ''
Ann. of Math.'' (2) 130 (1989), no. 1, 41–73.
* ''Convergence groups are Fuchsian groups'', ''Ann. of Math.'' (2) 136 (1992), no. 3, 447–510.
* with G. R. Meyerhoff, N. Thurston: ''Homotopy hyperbolic 3-manifolds are hyperbolic'', ''Ann. of Math.'' (2) 157 (2003), no. 2, 335–431.
* with
D. Calegari: ''Shrinkwrapping and the taming of hyperbolic 3-manifolds'', ''
J. Amer. Math. Soc.'' 19 (2006), no. 2, 385–446.
* with G. R. Meyerhoff, P. Milley: ''Minimum volume cusped hyperbolic three-manifolds'', ''J. Amer. Math. Soc.'' 22 (2009), no. 4, 1157–1215.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gabai, David
1954 births
Living people
Topologists
Princeton University faculty
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
Clay Research Award recipients
Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
Geometers