Thurston

A symposium celebrating the mathematical legacy of the late Bill Thurston, the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Mathematics and winner of the Fields Medal, will take place June 23-27 in Uris Hall auditorium.

Along with speakers from several institutions, a public lecture by mathematician Jeffrey Weeks titled “The Shape of Space” will take place June 24 at 7:30 p.m.

Weeks, who studied under Thurston at Princeton University, will use computer games to introduce the concept of a multiconnected universe. Interactive 3-D graphics will take viewers on a tour of several possible shapes for space, and recent satellite data will provide clues to the true shape of the universe.

All this will be tied to Thurston’s pioneering discoveries about the curvature of space, with fleece surfaces to illustrate his main ideas.

The goal of the symposium is to bring together a broad spectrum of mathematicians to describe recent advances and explore future directions motivated by Thurston’s ideas.

Thurston, who died in 2012, was considered one of the greatest mathematicians of the last several decades. Cornell’s only Fields Medalist, he made fundamental contributions to topology, geometry and dynamical systems, and also introduced new ways of thinking about mathematics.