Category Archives: Commentary

Bill Thurston 1946-2012

This morning I heard the awful news that Bill Thurston died last night. Many of us knew that Bill was very ill, but we all hoped (or imagined?) that he would still be with us for a while yet, and … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 12 Comments

Hyperbolic Geometry (157b) Notes #1

I am Alden, one of Danny’s students. Error/naivete that may (will) be found here is mine. In these posts, I will attempt to give notes from Danny’s class on hyperbolic geometry (157b). This first post covers some models for hyperbolic … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary, Euclidean Geometry, Groups, Hyperbolic geometry, Lie groups, Overview, Visualization | 5 Comments

Amenability of Thompson’s group F?

Geometric group theory is not a coherent and unified field of enquiry so much as a collection of overlapping methods, examples, and contexts. The most important examples of groups are those that arise in nature: free groups and fundamental groups … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary, Groups | Tagged , , , , | 12 Comments

The (strengthened) Hanna Neumann Conjecture

A few days ago, Joel Friedman posted a paper on the arXiv purporting to give a proof of the (strengthened) Hanna Neumann conjecture, a well-known problem in geometric group theory. Simply stated, the problem is as follows. Conjecture (Hanna Neumann): … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary, Groups | Tagged , , | 1 Comment