Andrew John Casson FRS (born 1943) is a

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

, studying geometric topology. Casson is the Philip Schuyler Beebe Professor of Mathematics at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

Education and Career

Casson was educated at

Latymer Upper School (Slowly Therefore Surely) , established = , closed = , sister_school = Godolphin and Latymer School , type = Public schoolIndependent day school , head_label = H ...

and

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge or Oxford. ...

, where he graduated with a BA in the Mathematical Tripos in 1965.'University News: Cambridge Tripos Results', ''Times'', 21 June 1965. His doctoral advisor at the

University of Liverpool , mottoeng = These days of peace foster learning , established = 1881 – University College Liverpool1884 – affiliated to the federal Victoria Universityhttp://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/2004/4 University of Manchester Act 200 ...

was

C. T. C. Wall Charles Terence Clegg "Terry" Wall (born 14 December 1936) is a British mathematician, educated at Marlborough College, Marlborough and Trinity College, Cambridge. He is an :wikt:emeritus, emeritus professor of the University of Liverpool, where ...

, but he never completed his doctorate; instead what would have been his Ph.D. thesis became his fellowship dissertation as a research fellow at Trinity College. Casson was Professor of Mathematics at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,07 ...

between 1981 and 1986, at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, from 1986 to 2000, and has been at Yale since 2000.

Work

Casson has worked in both high-dimensional manifold topology and 3- and 4-dimensional

topology In mathematics, topology (from the Greek words , and ) is concerned with the properties of a geometric object that are preserved under continuous deformations, such as stretching, twisting, crumpling, and bending; that is, without closing ...

, using both geometric and algebraic techniques. Among other discoveries, he contributed to the disproof of the manifold

Hauptvermutung The ''Hauptvermutung'' of geometric topology is a now refuted conjecture asking whether any two triangulations of a triangulable space have subdivisions that are combinatorially equivalent, i.e. the subdivided triangulations are built up in the s ...

, introduced the Casson invariant, a modern invariant for 3- manifolds, and

Casson handle In 4-dimensional topology, a branch of mathematics, a Casson handle is a 4-dimensional topological 2-handle constructed by an infinite procedure. They are named for Andrew Casson, who introduced them in about 1973. They were originally called "fle ...

s, used in

Michael Freedman Michael Hartley Freedman (born April 21, 1951) is an American mathematician, at Microsoft Station Q, a research group at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 1986, he was awarded a Fields Medal for his work on the 4-dimensional gene ...

's proof of the 4-dimensional

Poincaré conjecture In the mathematical field of geometric topology, the Poincaré conjecture (, , ) is a theorem about the characterization of the 3-sphere, which is the hypersphere that bounds the unit ball in four-dimensional space. Originally conjectured ...

Awards

In 1991, he 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 is ...

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, ...

. In 1998 he was elected to Fellowship of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

References

External links

Official Home Page

The Hauptvermutung book
(including Casson's 1967 Trinity College fellowship dissertation)
Proceedings of the Casson Fest (Arkansas and Texas 2003)
A conference to celebrate Casson's 60th birthday, with biographical information.

* 1943 births Living people Fellows of the Royal Society Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge University of Texas at Austin faculty University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty Yale University faculty Topologists {{mathematician-stub