Joachim Hyam Rubinstein

FAA The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic m ...

(born 7 March 1948, in

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/ Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a me ...

) an

Australian Australian(s) may refer to: Australia * Australia, a country * Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia ** European Australians ** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists ** Aboriginal ...

top

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 ...

specialising in

low-dimensional topology In mathematics, low-dimensional topology is the branch of topology that studies manifolds, or more generally topological spaces, of four or fewer dimensions. Representative topics are the structure theory of 3-manifolds and 4-manifolds, knot the ...

; he is currently serving as an honorary

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professor ...

in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb n ...

, having retired in 2019. He has spoken and written widely on the state of the mathematical sciences in Australia, with particular focus on the impacts of reduced Government spending for university mathematics departments.

Education

In 1965, Rubinstein matriculated (i.e. graduated) from

Melbourne High School Melbourne High School is a Education in Australia#Government schools, government-funded Single-sex education, single-sex Selective school, academically selective secondary school, secondary day school for boys, located in the Melbourne suburb o ...

, Australia winning the maximum of four

exhibition An exhibition, in the most general sense, is an organized presentation and display of a selection of items. In practice, exhibitions usually occur within a cultural or educational setting such as a museum, art gallery, park, library, exhibiti ...

s. In 1969, he graduated from

Monash University Monash University () is a public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Named for prominent World War I general Sir John Monash, it was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. The university h ...

in Melbourne, with a B.Sc.(Honours) degree in mathematics. In 1974, Rubinstein received his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

from 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 ...

under the advisership of

John Stallings John Robert Stallings Jr. (July 22, 1935 – November 24, 2008) was a mathematician known for his seminal contributions to geometric group theory and 3-manifold topology. Stallings was a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Mathematics at th ...

. His dissertation was on the topic of ''Isotopies of Incompressible Surfaces in Three Dimensional Manifolds''.

Research interests

His major contributions include results involving almost normal

Heegaard splitting In the mathematical field of geometric topology, a Heegaard splitting () is a decomposition of a compact oriented 3-manifold that results from dividing it into two handlebodies. Definitions Let ''V'' and ''W'' be handlebodies of genus ''g'', and ...

s and the closely related joint work with Jon T. Pitts relating strongly irreducible

s to

minimal surface In mathematics, a minimal surface is a surface that locally minimizes its area. This is equivalent to having zero mean curvature (see definitions below). The term "minimal surface" is used because these surfaces originally arose as surfaces tha ...

s, joint work with

William Jaco William "Bus" H. Jaco (born July 14, 1940 in Grafton, West Virginia) is an American mathematician who is known for his role in the Jaco–Shalen–Johannson decomposition theorem and is currently Regents Professor and Grayce B. Kerr Chair at ...

on special

triangulation In trigonometry and geometry, triangulation is the process of determining the location of a point by forming triangles to the point from known points. Applications In surveying Specifically in surveying, triangulation involves only angle ...

s of

3-manifold In mathematics, a 3-manifold is a space that locally looks like Euclidean 3-dimensional space. A 3-manifold can be thought of as a possible shape of the universe. Just as a sphere looks like a plane to a small enough observer, all 3-manifolds ...

s (namely 0-efficient and 1-efficient triangulations), and joint work with

Martin Scharlemann Martin George Scharlemann (born 6 December 1948) is an American topologist who is a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley under the guidance of Robion Kirby in 19 ...

on the Rubinstein–Scharlemann graphic. He is a key figure in the algorithmic theory of 3-manifolds, and one of the initial developers of the

Regina Regina (Latin for "queen") may refer to: Places Canada * Regina, Saskatchewan, the capital city of the province ** Regina (electoral district) ** Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Regina France * Régina, French Guiana, a commune United States * ...

program, which implements his

3-sphere In mathematics, a 3-sphere is a higher-dimensional analogue of a sphere. It may be embedded in 4-dimensional Euclidean space as the set of points equidistant from a fixed central point. Analogous to how the boundary of a ball in three dimens ...

recognition algorithm. His research interests also include: shortest networks applied to underground mine design,

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

, learning theory,

financial mathematics Mathematical finance, also known as quantitative finance and financial mathematics, is a field of applied mathematics, concerned with mathematical modeling of financial markets. In general, there exist two separate branches of finance that require ...

, and stock market trading systems.

Honours

* Past President of the

Australian Mathematical Society The Australian Mathematical Society (AustMS) was founded in 1956 and is the national society of the mathematics profession in Australia. One of the Society's listed purposes is to promote the cause of mathematics in the community by representing ...

. * Chair of the

Australian Committee for the Mathematical Sciences Australian(s) may refer to: Australia * Australia, a country * Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia ** European Australians ** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists ** Aboriginal Au ...

. * Elected Fellow of the

Australian Academy of Science The Australian Academy of Science was founded in 1954 by a group of distinguished Australians, including Australian Fellows of the Royal Society of London. The first president was Sir Mark Oliphant. The academy is modelled after the Royal So ...

in 2003. * Recipient of the

Hannan Medal The Hannan Medal in the Mathematical Sciences is awarded every two years by the Australian Academy of Science to recognize achievements by Australians in the fields of pure mathematics, applied and computational mathematics, and statistical scienc ...

in 2004. * Recipient of the

George Szekeres Medal The George Szekeres Medal is awarded by the Australian Mathematical Society for outstanding research contributions over a fifteen-year period. This award, established in 2001, was given biennially in even-numbered years until 2021 and has since be ...

in 2008. * Fellow of 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 ...

, 2012. *''From July 11 to 22, 2011, a workshop and conference in his honour, jointly titled “Hyamfest: Geometry & Topology Down Under”, were held at the University of Melbourne.''

References

External links

*
InterviewLinkedIn page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rubinstein, J. Hyam 1948 births 20th-century Australian mathematicians 21st-century Australian mathematicians Topologists University of California, Berkeley alumni University of Melbourne faculty Mathematicians from Melbourne Living people People educated at Melbourne High School Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science Fellows of the American Mathematical Society