Andrew Casson

Andrew John Casson FRS (born 1943) is a mathematician, studying geometric topology. Casson is the Philip Schuyler Beebe Professor of Mathematics[1] at Yale University.

Andrew Casson
Andrew Casson at Berkeley in 1991
Photo courtesy George M. Bergman
Born1943 (age 79–80)
Alma materUniversity of Liverpool
AwardsOswald Veblen Prize in Geometry (1991)
Fellow of the Royal Society (1998)
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsYale University
University of California, Berkeley
University of Texas at Austin
Doctoral advisorC. T. C. Wall
Doctoral studentsDaniel Allcock
Stephen Bigelow
Danny Calegari
Greg Kuperberg
Mahan Mitra
Andrew Ranicki

Education and Career

Casson was educated at Latymer Upper School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a BA in the Mathematical Tripos in 1965.[2] His doctoral advisor at the University of Liverpool was C. T. C. Wall, but he never completed his doctorate; instead what would have been his Ph.D. thesis became his fellowship dissertation as a research fellow at Trinity College.

Casson was Professor of Mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin between 1981 and 1986, at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1986 to 2000, and has been at Yale since 2000.

Work

Casson has worked in both high-dimensional manifold topology and 3- and 4-dimensional topology, using both geometric and algebraic techniques. Among other discoveries, he contributed to the disproof of the manifold Hauptvermutung, introduced the Casson invariant, a modern invariant for 3-manifolds, and Casson handles, used in Michael Freedman's proof of the 4-dimensional Poincaré conjecture.

Awards

In 1991, he was awarded the Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry by the American Mathematical Society. In 1998, he was elected to Fellowship of the Royal Society.

References
  1. Andrew Casson named the Beebe Professor of Mathematics, Yale Daily Bulletin, June 10, 2011.
  2. 'University News: Cambridge Tripos Results', Times, 21 June 1965.


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