Talk:William Thurston

AMS Book prize
Bill Thurston won the first AMS Book Prize on 6 January, 2005, for his textbook "Three-dimensional Geometry and Topology". See. Perhaps in 20 years this fact will be sufficiently notable to go in the article. But it isn't yet. Dbenbenn 03:58, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Certainly his other accomplishments dwarf winning the book prize, but the bar for inclusion is not as high as that.  --C S (Talk) 11:41, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Some other accomplishments:
 * Thurston's classification theorem
 * Discrete Riemann mapping theorem

XaosBits (Sat Apr 2 23:41:24 GMT 2005)


 * Book prize seems notable enough to go under Education and career, best ref is now http://www.ams.org/ams/press/book-thurston.html I've added a short paragraph.

Correct me if I'm wrong but is not Thurston's classification theorem which redirect to Nielsen-Thurston classification the same as the red link geometrization theorem mentioned in the article. --Salix alba (talk) 15:30, 23 March 2006 (UTC)


 * It's different. The geometrization theorem is a special case of the geometrization conjecture; it applies only to Haken manifolds.  Since many 3-manifolds are Haken and Thurston thought that the usage of the Haken hypothesis was rather artificial, that gave him motivation to make the full geometrization conjecture.


 * The Nielsen-Thurston classification is a classification of surface automorphisms. One has to know and understand this classification to prove Thurston's geometrization theorem for surface bundles over the circle.  --C S (Talk) 22:24, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Citing sources
Would the people who created/edited this article please add source citations for the biographical info mentioned in the article, as per WP:CITE and WP:BLP? Thanks, Nsk92 18:18, 13 September 2007 (UTC)


 * And is there a reliable Web report of his death? —Tamfang (talk) 17:53, 22 August 2012 (UTC)


 * The AMS has an announcement here : http://www.ams.org/news?news_id=1602
 * See also Terry Tao's blog, terrytao.wordpress.com. :-( 69.228.170.132 (talk) 23:57, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Unclear passage
In the section The geometrization conjecture, this passage appears:

"''To complete the picture, Thurston proved a hyperbolization theorem for Haken manifolds. A particularly important corollary is that many knots and links are in fact hyperbolic. Together with his hyperbolic Dehn surgery theorem, this showed that closed hyperbolic 3-manifolds existed in great abundance.

"The geometrization theorem has been called Thurston's Monster Theorem, due to the length and difficulty of the proof. Complete proofs were not written up until almost 20 years later. The proof involves a number of deep and original insights which have linked many apparently disparate fields to 3-manifolds. ''"

In this passage it appears that the words "the geometrization theorem" is essentially referring to the hyperbolization theorem for Haken manifolds.

If so, I hope someone knowledgeable about this subject will make that much clearer.

If not, I still hope someone knowledgeable about this subject can clarify just what theorem "the geometrization theorem" refers to in this passage. (Clearly it is not the full geometrization theorem proved by Perelman.) 2601:200:C000:1A0:F1F8:E82B:D49B:F6DF (talk) 22:43, 25 October 2021 (UTC)


 * As far as i know the name "monster theorem" concerns hyperbolisation for Haken manifolds, as you guessed, so i made the edit you suggested. It would be good to have a reference there, one i am aware of is the intro to Misha Kapovich's book "Hyperbolic manifolds and discrete groups" where he calls it "the big monster". Does anybody know another? jraimbau (talk) 14:00, 26 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Thank you, jraimbau! That passage is much clearer now. 2601:200:C000:1A0:204A:C88A:A06B:3595 (talk) 16:14, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Born in D.C.?
The article states that Thurston was born in Washington, D.C.

Certainly he lived in the D.C. area for most of his life before going to college.

But I had thought he was born in the Netherlands. Is that not the case? 2601:200:C000:1A0:204A:C88A:A06B:3595 (talk) 16:18, 26 October 2021 (UTC)