John W. Morgan Receives 2009 AMS Conant Prize

January 6, 2009

Providence, RI---John W. Morgan of Columbia University is receiving the 2009 AMS Levi L. Conant Prize. Presented annually, the Conant Prize recognizes the best expository paper published in either the Notices of the AMS or the Bulletin of the AMS in the preceding five years. The prize will be awarded on Tuesday, January 6, 2009, at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Washington, DC.

Morgan is receiving the Conant Prize for his article, "Recent Progress on the Poincaré Conjecture and the Classification of 3-Manifolds," Bulletin of the AMS 42 (2005), 57-78. The celebrated Poincaré Conjecture grew out of a 1904 paper by the legendary mathematician and physicist Henri Poincaré. The conjecture inspired an enormous amount of research in geometry and topology, including the celebrated Geometrization Conjecture of William Thurston. Building on crucial work by Richard Hamilton, Grigory Perelman gained worldwide acclaim by solving both the Poincaré Conjecture and the Geometrization Conjecture.

The prize citation states: "Morgan's paper [in the Bulletin] was written in 2004 at a critical juncture in this story, just after the appearance of Perelman's papers and while they were still undergoing scrutiny by experts. [Morgan's paper] made the momentous developments surrounding the conjectures of Poincaré and Thurston accessible to a wide mathematical audience. The article captured key concepts and results from topology and differential geometry and conveyed to the reader the significance of the advances. Morgan's exposition is elegant and mathematically precise. The paper transmits a great amount of information in a seemingly effortless flow of mathematical ideas from across a broad spectrum of topics. It was a valuable survey when it appeared and remains so today."

The full citation for this prize and additional information can be found in the Prize Booklet. Find out more about AMS prizes at http://www.ams.org/prizes-awards.

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