David Gabai is an American

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, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

and the Hughes-Rogers Professor of Mathematics at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

. His research focuses on low-dimensional topology and

hyperbolic geometry In mathematics, hyperbolic geometry (also called Lobachevskian geometry or János Bolyai, Bolyai–Nikolai Lobachevsky, Lobachevskian geometry) is a non-Euclidean geometry. The parallel postulate of Euclidean geometry is replaced with: :For a ...

Biography

David Gabai received his B.S. in mathematics from MIT in 1976 and his Ph.D. in mathematics from

in 1980. Gabai completed his doctoral dissertation, titled "Foliations and genera of links", under the supervision of

William Thurston William Paul Thurston (October 30, 1946August 21, 2012) was an American mathematician. He was a pioneer in the field of low-dimensional topology and was awarded the Fields Medal in 1982 for his contributions to the study of 3-manifolds. Thurst ...

. After positions at

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...

and

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

, Gabai spent most of the period of 1986–2001 at

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private university, private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small g ...

, 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, 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 The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the IMU Abacus Medal (known before ...

2010,

Hyderabad Hyderabad is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River (India), Musi River, in the northern part of Southern India. With an average altitude of , much ...

on the topic of

topology Topology (from the Greek language, Greek words , and ) is the branch of mathematics concerned with the properties of a Mathematical object, geometric object that are preserved under Continuous function, continuous Deformation theory, deformat ...

. In 2011, he was elected to the

United States National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

. In 2012, he became a fellow of the

. Gabai was elected as a member of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) 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 other ...

in 2014.

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

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gabai, David 1954 births Living people American topologists Princeton University faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Clay Research Award recipients Fellows of the American Mathematical Society American geometers