David Gabai Receives 2004 AMS Veblen Prize in Geometry

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Mike Breen or Annette Emerson, AMS Public Awareness Officers
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January 8, 2004

PROVIDENCE, RI---David Gabai of Princeton University is receiving the 2004 Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry. Presented every three years by the American Mathematical Society, the Veblen Prize is one of the highest distinctions for work in geometry. The prize will be awarded today at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Phoenix, Arizona.

Gabai is being honored for his work in geometric topology, in particular, the topology of 3-dimensional manifolds. The prize citation states: "Since its beginnings in the early twentieth century, 3-dimensional topology has occupied a central role in geometric topology. It is tantalizingly close to what we can directly visualize, yet with its knotting phenomena it is an incredibly complex and difficult subject. For the last twenty years, Gabai has been one of the leading figures in this field. He has led many of the main avenues of development, developing tools in order to solve some of its most important problems himself, tools that have turned out to be central to the further development of the subject."

Further information about AMS prizes may be found at http://www.ams.org/prizes-awards.

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