John Morgan (mathematician)

John Morgan
Born	March 21, 1946 Philadelphia
Nationality	United States
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	Stony Brook University Columbia University
Alma mater	Rice University
Doctoral advisor	Morton L. Curtis
Doctoral students	Sadayoshi Kojima Peter Ozsváth Zoltán Szabó Pedram Safari

John Willard Morgan (born March 21, 1946) is an American mathematician, with contributions to topology and geometry. He is currently the director of the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook University.

Life

He received his B.A. in 1968 and Ph.D. in 1969, both from Rice University. His Ph.D. thesis, entitled Stable tangential homotopy equivalences, was written under the supervision of Morton L. Curtis. He was an instructor at Princeton University from 1969 to 1972, and an assistant professor at MIT from 1972 to 1974. He has been on the faculty at Columbia University since 1974. In July 2009, he moved to Stony Brook University to become the first director of the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics, a research center devoted to the interface between mathematics and physics.

He is an editor of the Journal of the American Mathematical Society and Geometry and Topology.

He collaborated with Gang Tian in verifying Grigori Perelman's proof of the Poincaré conjecture.^[1] The Morgan–Tian team was one of three teams formed for this purpose; the other teams were those of Huai-Dong Cao and Xi-Ping Zhu, and Bruce Kleiner and John Lott. Morgan gave a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid on August 24, 2006, declaring that "in 2003, Perelman solved the Poincaré conjecture."

Awards and honors

In 2008 he was awarded a Gauss Lectureship by the German Mathematical Society. In 2009 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.^[2]

Selected publications

Articles

• Pierre Deligne, Phillip Griffiths, John Morgan, Dennis Sullivan, Real homotopy theory of Kähler manifolds, Inventiones Mathematicae 29 (1975), no. 3, 245–274. MR 0382702
• John W. Morgan, The algebraic topology of smooth algebraic varieties, Publications Mathématiques de l'IHÉS 48 (1978), 137–204. MR 0516917
• John W. Morgan, Trees and hyperbolic geometry, Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians, Vol. 1, 2 (Berkeley, CA, 1986), 590–597, Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, RI, 1987. MR 0934260
• John W. Morgan, Zoltán Szabó, Clifford Henry Taubes, A product formula for the Seiberg-Witten invariants and the generalized Thom conjecture, Journal of Differential Geometry 44 (1996), no. 4, 706–788. MR 1438191
• John W. Morgan, Recent progress on the Poincaré conjecture and the classification of 3-manifolds, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 42 (2005), no. 1, 57–78. MR 2115067

Books

• Quantum fields and strings: a course for mathematicians. Vol. 1, 2. Material from the Special Year on Quantum Field Theory held at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, 1996–1997. Edited by Pierre Deligne, Pavel Etingof, Daniel S. Freed, Lisa C. Jeffrey, David Kazhdan, John W. Morgan, David R. Morrison and Edward Witten. American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI; Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), Princeton, NJ, 1999. Vol. 1: xxii+723 pp.; Vol. 2: pp. i--xxiv and 727–1501. ISBN 0-8218-1198-3, 81-06 (81T30 81Txx)
• Phillip A. Griffiths, John W. Morgan, "Rational homotopy theory and differential forms", Progress in Mathematics, vol. 16, Birkhäuser, Boston, MA, 1981. ISBN 3-7643-3041-4^[3]
• "The Smith conjecture", Papers presented at the symposium held at Columbia University, New York, 1979. Edited by John W. Morgan and Hyman Bass. Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 112, Academic Press, Orlando, FL, 1984. ISBN 0-12-506980-4
• John W. Morgan, Tomasz Mrowka, Daniel Ruberman, "The L²-moduli space and a vanishing theorem for Donaldson polynomial invariants", Monographs in Geometry and Topology, II. International Press, Cambridge, MA, 1994. ISBN 1-57146-006-3
• Robert Friedman, John W. Morgan, "Smooth four-manifolds and complex surfaces", Ergebnisse der Mathematik und ihrer Grenzgebiete, vol. 27, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1994. ISBN 3-540-57058-6
• John W. Morgan, "The Seiberg-Witten equations and applications to the topology of smooth four-manifolds", Mathematical Notes, vol. 44, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1996. ISBN 0-691-02597-5
• Morgan, John; Gang Tian (2007). Ricci Flow and the Poincaré Conjecture. Clay Mathematics Institute. ISBN 0-8218-4328-1.
• Morgan, John W.; Fong, Frederick Tsz-Ho (2010). Ricci Flow and Geometrization of 3-Manifolds. University Lecture Series. ISBN 978-0-8218-4963-7. Retrieved 2010-09-26.

References

1. Morgan, John W.; Gang Tian (25 July 2006). "Ricci Flow and the Poincaré Conjecture". arXiv:math.DG/0607607.
2. List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society, retrieved 2013-02-10.
3. Chen, Kuo-Tsai (1983). "Review: Rational homotopy theory and differential forms, by P. A. Griffiths and J. W. Morgan". Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.) 8 (3): 496–498. doi:10.1090/s0273-0979-1983-15135-2.

External links

• John Morgan at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• Home page at Columbia University
• Biographical sketch at the Chinese University of Hong Kong
• Conference in Honor of the 60th Birthday of John Morgan at Columbia University