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William P. Thurston Receives 2005 AMS Book Prize

Contact: Mike Breen or Annette Emerson
AMS Public Awareness Officers
paoffice@ams.org
Phone: 401-455-4000 or
404-460-6922 (Joint Math Meetings Press Room)

January 6, 2005

Providence, RI:

William P. Thurston of Cornell University is receiving the 2005 AMS Book Prize. Presented every three years by the American Mathematical Society, the Book Prize recognizes an outstanding research book that makes a seminal contribution to the research literature, reflects the highest standards of research exposition, and promises to have a deep and long-term impact in its area. The prize will be awarded today at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Atlanta, Georgia.

Thurston is receiving the prize for his book Three-dimensional Geometry and Topology, edited by Silvio Levy. The book presents Thurston's "Geometrization Program", one of the big events of modern mathematics. The main thrust of the program is to prove a classification of all 3-manifolds. A corollary of the program would be the celebrated Poincaré Conjecture.

More than twenty years ago, Thurston wrote an extensive set of notes explaining the key ideas of his Geometrization Program. These notes were circulated informally by the Princeton University mathematics department. While the notes do not prove the geometrization program, they do lay out all the key ideas and explain how things fit together. The book Three-dimensional Geometry and Topology is the first volume of a multi-volume work projected to provide all the details of the proof of Thurston's program. "This is exciting and vital mathematics," the prize citation states. "Thurston's book is nearly unique in the intuitive grasp of subtle geometric ideas that it provides. It has been enormously influential, both for graduate students and seasoned researchers alike. Certainly the army of people who are working on the geometrization program regard this book as `the touchstone' for their work. A book that has played such an important and dynamic role in modern mathematics is eminently deserving of the AMS Book Prize."

Find out more about AMS prizes at http://www.ams.org/prizes-awards.

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