Francis Bonahon (9 September 1955,

Tarbes Tarbes (; Gascon: ''Tarba'') is a commune in the Hautes-Pyrénées department in the Occitanie region of southwestern France. It is the capital of Bigorre and of the Hautes-Pyrénées. It has been a commune since 1790. It was known as ''Turba'' ...

) is a French mathematician, specializing in low-dimensional topology.

Biography

Bonahon received in 1972 his ''

baccalauréat The ''baccalauréat'' (; ), often known in France colloquially as the ''bac'', is a French national academic qualification that students can obtain at the completion of their secondary education (at the end of the ''lycée'') by meeting certain ...

'', and was accepted in 1974 into the

École Normale Supérieure École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savoi ...

. He received in 1975 his ''maîtrise'' in mathematics from the

University of Paris VII A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...

, and in 1979 his doctorate from the University of Paris XI under

Laurence Siebenmann Laurent Carl Siebenmann (the first name is sometimes spelled Laurence or Larry) (born 1939) is a Canadian mathematician based at the Université de Paris-Sud at Orsay, France. After working for several years as a Professor at Orsay he became a ...

with thesis ''Involutions et fibrés de Seifert dans les variétés de dimension 3''. As a postdoc he was for the academic year 1979/80 a ''Procter Fellow'' at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

. In 1980 he became an ''attaché de recherche'' and in 1983 a ''chargé de recherche'' of the

CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 ...

. In 1985 he received his

habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...

from the University of Paris XI under Siebenmann with thesis ''Geometric structures on 3-manifolds and applications''. Bonahon became in 1986 an assistant professor, in 1988 an associate professor, and in 1989 a full professor at the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

. He was a visiting professor in 1990 at the

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...

, in 1996 at the Centre Émile Borel and at the IHES, in 1997 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 ...

, in 2000 at IHES, and in 2015 at the MSRI. Bonahon's research deals with three-dimensional topology, knot theory, surface diffeomorphisms, hyperbolic geometry, and Kleinian groups. He received in 1985 a bronze medal from

and from 1989 to 1994 a Presidential Young Investigator Award. From 1987 to 1989 he was a

Sloan Research Fellow The Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation since 1955 to "provide support and recognition to early-career scientists and scholars". This program is one of the oldest of its kind in the United States. ...

. In 1990 he was an Invited Speaker with talk ''Ensembles limites et applications'' at the ICM in

Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ci ...

. He was elected a Fellow of

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, ...

in 2012. His doctoral students include Frédéric Paulin.

Selected publications

''Low dimensional geometry: from euclidean surfaces to hyperbolic knots.''
Student Mathematical Library, American Mathematical Society 2009.
''Geodesic laminations on surfaces''
in M. Lyubich, John Milnor, Yair Minsky (eds.) ''Laminations and Foliations in Dynamics, Geometry and Topology'', Contemporary Mathematics 269, 2001, 1–38.
''Geometric Structures on 3-manifolds''
in

R. J. Daverman Robert Jay Daverman (born 28 September 1941) is an American topologist. Daverman was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on 28 September 1941. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1963 from Calvin College and pursued doctoral study under R. H. Bing at th ...

, R. B. Sher (eds.) ''Handbook of Geometric Topology'', North Holland 2002, pp. 93–164. *as editor with Robert Devaney, Frederick Gardiner, and Dragomir Saric
''Conformal Dynamics and Hyperbolic Geometry''
Contemporary Mathematics 573, AMS, 2012 *''Difféotopies des espaces lenticulaires'', Topology 22, 1983, 305–314
''Cobordism of automorphism of surfaces''
Annales ENS, 16, 1983, 237–270 *with Laurence Siebenmann: ''The classification of Seifert fibered 3-orbifolds'', in R. Fenn (ed.) ''Low Dimensional Topology'', Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 19–85 *''Bouts des variétés hyperboliques de dimension 3'', Annals of Mathematics, vol. 124, 1986, pp. 71–158
''The geometry of Teichmüller space via geodesic currents''
Inventiones Mathematicae, vol. 92, 1988, 139–162 *''Earthquakes on Riemann surfaces and on measured geodesic laminations'', Amer. Math. Soc. vol. 330, 1992, 69–95
''Shearing hyperbolic surfaces, bending pleated surfaces and Thurston's symplectic form.''
Ann. Fac. Sci. Toulouse Math. (6) 5 (1996), no. 2, 233–297. *with Jean-Pierre Otal: ''Laminations mesurées de plissage des variétés hyperboliques de dimension 3'', Annals of Mathematics 113, 2004, 1013–1055. *''Kleinian groups which are almost fuchsian'', J. Reine. Angew. Mathematik, vol. 587, 2005, pp. 1–1
arXiv.org preprint
*with X. Liu ''Representations of the quantum Teichmüller space, and invariants of surface diffeomorphisms'', Geometry and Topology, vol. 11, 2007, pp. 889–937
arXiv.org preprint
*with Guillaume Dreyer: ''Parameterizing Hitchin components.'' Duke Math. J. 163 (2014), no. 15, 2935–2975
arXiv.org preprint
*with Helen Wong: ''Representations of the Kauffman bracket skein algebra I: invariants and miraculous cancellations.'' Invent. Math. 204 (2016), no. 1, 195–243
arXiv.org preprint

References

External links

Francis Bonbon, Department of Mathematics, University of Southern California
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bonahon, Francis 20th-century French mathematicians 21st-century French mathematicians École Normale Supérieure alumni University of Paris alumni University of Southern California faculty Fellows of the American Mathematical Society 1955 births Living people