Michael Freedman | |
|---|---|
 Freedman in 2010 | |
| Born | Michael Hartley Freedman April 21, 1951 (1951-04-21) (age 74) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Princeton University (PhD) |
| Known for | Work on theGeneralized Poincaré conjecture in dimension 4 Systolic geometry E8 manifold NLTS conjecture |
| Awards | Sloan Research Fellowship (1980) MacArthur Fellowship (1984) Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry (1986) Fields Medal (1986) National Medal of Science (1987) Guggenheim Fellowship (1994) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | Microsoft Station Q UC Santa Barbara UC San Diego Institute for Advanced Study UC Berkeley |
| Thesis | Codimension-Two Surgery (1973) |
| Doctoral advisor | William Browder |
| Doctoral students | Ian Agol Zhenghan Wang |
Michael Hartley Freedman (born April 21, 1951) is an Americanmathematician atMicrosoft Station Q, a research group at theUniversity of California, Santa Barbara.[1] In 1986, he was awarded aFields Medal for his work on the 4-dimensionalgeneralized Poincaré conjecture. Freedman andRobion Kirby showed that anexoticR4 manifold exists.
Freedman was born inLos Angeles,California, in theUnited States. His father,Benedict Freedman, was an American Jewish aeronautical engineer, musician, writer, and mathematician.[2][3] His mother,Nancy Mars Freedman, performed as an actress and also trained as an artist.[4] His parents cowrote a series of novels together.[3] He entered theUniversity of California, Berkeley, but dropped out after two semesters.[5] In the same year he wrote a letter toRalph Fox, aPrinceton University professor at the time, and was admitted to the university's graduate school, where in 1968 he continued his studies and received aPh.D. in 1973 for his doctoral dissertation titledCodimension-Two Surgery, written under the supervision ofWilliam Browder. After graduating, Freedman returned toBerkeley, where he was a lecturer in the department of mathematics until 1975. He left Berkeley to become a member of theInstitute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton. In 1976 he was appointed assistant professor in the department of mathematics at theUniversity of California, San Diego. He spent the year 1980/81 at IAS, then returned to UCSD, where in 1982 he was promoted to professor. He was appointed the Charles Lee Powell chair of mathematics at UCSD in 1985.
Freedman has received numerous awards and honors includingSloan andGuggenheim Fellowships, aMacArthur Fellowship, and theNational Medal of Science. He is an elected member of theNational Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences and of theAmerican Mathematical Society.[6] In addition to winning aFields Medal at theInternational Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in 1986 in Berkeley, he was an Invited Speaker at the ICM in 1983 inWarsaw[7] and at the ICM in 1998 inBerlin.[8] He currently works atMicrosoft Station Q at theUniversity of California, Santa Barbara, where his team is involved in the development of thetopological quantum computer.
