Colloqiuim-  "The multiple personalities of knots and 3-manifolds"/Distinguished Speculative First of April Talk

Math Department Colloquium -- Distinguished Speculative First of April Talk

Speaker: Cameron M Gordon, University of Texas at Austin
Date and Time: Monday, April 1, 11:15am-12:15pm
Place: Rome 206

Title: "The multiple personalities of knots and 3-manifolds"

Abstract: 3-dimensional topology and knot theory are extremely rich subjects, where many branches of mathematics seem to intersect. A major challenge is to understand how the various different aspects of 3-manifolds and knots are related. After a survey of these "personalities", we will focus on the L-space Conjecture, which posits a remarkable connection between three properties of 3-manifolds which are respectively algebraic, topological and analytic.

Bio: Cameron Gordon received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 1971. He has been at the University of Texas at Austin since 1977, where he currently holds a Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chair in Mathematics. He has held Sloan and Guggenheim Fellowships, and is a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 2017 he was a Rothschild Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Isaac Newton Institute. His research interests are in low-dimensional topology, with a particular emphasis on knot theory.