Category Archives: Uncategorized

Bing’s wild involution

An embedded circle separates the sphere into two connected components; this is the Jordan curve theorem. A strengthening of this fact, called the Jordan-Schoenflies theorem, says that the two components are disks; i.e. every embedded circle in the sphere bounds a … Continue reading

Posted in 3-manifolds, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Groups quasi-isometric to planes

I was saddened to hear the news that Geoff Mess recently passed away, just a few days short of his 54th birthday. I first met Geoff as a beginning graduate student at Berkeley, in 1995; in fact, I believe he gave the … Continue reading

Posted in 3-manifolds, Complex analysis, Groups, Hyperbolic geometry, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Thurston talks on geometrization at Harvard

In winter and spring of 2001, Nathan Dunfield and I ran a seminar at Harvard whose purpose was to go through Thurston’s proof of the geometrization theorem for Haken manifolds. This was a very useful and productive exercise, and there … Continue reading

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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 Notes #5 – Mostow Rigidity

1. Mostow Rigidity For hyperbolic surfaces, Moduli space is quite large and complicated. However, in three dimensions Moduli space is trivial: Theorem 1 If is a homotopy equivalence of closed hyperbolic manifolds with , then is homotopic to an isometry. … Continue reading

Posted in 3-manifolds, Groups, Hyperbolic geometry, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Hyperbolic Geometry Notes #2 – Triangles and Gauss Bonnet

In this post, I will cover triangles and area in spaces of constant (nonzero) curvature. We are focused on hyperbolic space, but we will talk about spheres and the Gauss-Bonnet theorem. 1. Triangles in Hyperbolic Space Suppose we are given … Continue reading

Posted in Euclidean Geometry, Geometric structures, Hyperbolic geometry, Surfaces, Uncategorized | 3 Comments