David Epstein FRS
Epstein in 2009
Born	David Bernard Alper Epstein 1937 (age 88–89)
Alma mater	University of Cambridge (PhD)
Spouse	Rona
Awards	FRS (2004)
Scientific career
Institutions	University of Warwick
Thesis	Three Dimensional Manifolds (1960)
Doctoral advisor	Christopher Zeeman
Doctoral students	Elmer ReesBrian Bowditch
Website	homepages.warwick.ac.uk/~masbab

David Bernard Alper Epstein (born 1937^[1]) is amathematician known for his work inhyperbolic geometry,3-manifolds, andgroup theory, amongst other fields. He co-founded theUniversity of Warwick mathematics department withChristopher Zeeman and is founding editor of the journalExperimental Mathematics.

In 1954, Epstein came to the UK after completing his bachelor's degree in mathematics inSouth Africa. Having received the exemption forMathematical Tripos part I at theUniversity of Cambridge, he completed Mathematical Tripos part II in 1955 and Mathematical Tripospart III in 1957. He completed hisPh.D. on the topic ofthree-dimensional manifolds under the supervision ofChristopher Zeeman in 1960. He then travelled toPrinceton University, where he spent one year attending the lectures ofNorman Steenrod oncohomology operations, making notes and revisions to them, later published as a book by thePrinceton University Press in 1962.^[2]

In 1961, Epstein moved to theInstitute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey. He returned to the UK in 1962 to become a research fellow of the newly foundedChurchill College, Cambridge. In 1964, he moved to the Mathematics Institute of theUniversity of Warwick to take up a Readership position there. He was the first academic at the University of Warwick to move into local accommodation, though many professors were appointed before him.

Epstein was awarded theSenior Berwick Prize by theLondon Mathematical Society in 1988.^[3]In 2004 he was elected aFellow of the Royal Society.^[3][4] In 2012 he became a fellow of theAmerican Mathematical Society.^[5][6][7]

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David Epstein was born in 1937 inPretoria, South Africa to Ben Epstein and Pauline (or Polly) Alper, bothJewish ofLithuanian descent, though Polly was born in South Africa. David finished school at the age of 14, and graduated from theUniversity of the Witwatersrand at the age of 17. He then won a scholarship to theUniversity of Cambridge, where he did Parts II and III of the Mathematical Tripos, graduating in 1957. He married Rona in 1958, after dating her from when he was 16 and she was 14. He did aPh.D. in Cambridge underChristopher Zeeman, which he completed at the age of 23 in 1960, when he was awarded a Research Fellowship atTrinity College, Cambridge, which he never took up.

After completing his Ph.D., Epstein went toPrinceton University for one year, and then to theInstitute for Advanced Study inPrinceton, New Jersey for another year. He returned to Cambridge in 1962, where he was an assistant lecturer at the university and director of studies at the newChurchill College. In 1963 his younger sister Debbie left South Africa when she was considered to be in danger of arrest by the South Africanapartheid regime. At this stage, his father Ben was also having severe problems with the South African regime as a result of his ethical stand as a doctor. For example, he was instructed by the hospital administration to stop putting "starvation" as the cause of death on the death certificates of black children, an instruction that he refused to follow. His mother Polly was also active politically against the government. Polly and Ben at first wanted to emigrate to the United States, but they were denied visas, so they emigrated instead to the UK.

• D.B.A. Epstein,Projective planes in 3-manifolds.Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society (3) 11 1961 469–484.
• D.B.A. Epstein and R.L.E. Schwarzenberger,Imbeddings of real projective spaces.Annals of Mathematics (2) 76 1962 180–184.
• D.B.A. Epstein,Steenrod operations in homological algebra.Inventiones Mathematicae 1 1966 152–208.
• D.B.A. Epstein,Periodic flows on three-manifolds.Annals of Mathematics (2) 95 1972 66–82.
• D.B.A. Epstein and E. Vogt,A counterexample to the periodic orbit conjecture in codimension 3.Annals of Mathematics (2) 108 (1978), no. 3, 539–552.
• D.B.A. Epstein and A. Marden,Convex hulls in hyperbolic space, a theorem of Sullivan, and measured pleated surfaces. Analytical and geometric aspects of hyperbolic space (Coventry/Durham, 1984), 113–253, London Math. Soc. Lecture Note Ser., 111,Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987.
• D.B.A. Epstein and R.C. Penner,Euclidean decompositions of noncompact hyperbolic manifolds.Journal of Differential Geometry 27 (1988), no. 1, 67–80.
• Epstein, David B. A.; Cannon, James W.; Holt, Derek F.; Levy, Silvio V. F.; Paterson, Michael S.; Thurston, William P.Word Processing in Groups. Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Boston, MA, 1992. xii+330 pp. ISBN 0-86720-244-0^[8]

• 1937 births
• Living people
• 20th-century British mathematicians
• 21st-century British mathematicians
• Topologists
• Academics of the University of Warwick
• Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
• Alumni of the University of Cambridge
• South African people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent
• People from Pretoria
• British fellows of the Royal Society

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