Biosketch
I was born in Britain (1945) and grew up there. My Ph.D. in pure mathematics is from Cambridge. After working at York and Warwick universities, I came to Stony Brook University, NY in 1978 working my way up to Distinguished Professor. I moved to Barnard College in 2007, where I am now the Helen Kimmel ’42 Professor of Mathematics.
Research Interests
During my career as a mathematician I have worked in several distinct fields. However, even though the fields have been different I have often worked on the same kinds of questions, trying to understand the detailed structure of particular objects. For example, in my Ph.D. thesis I found infinitely many distinct von Neumann algebras of a special type called a II-one factor, while recently I discovered infinitely many different symplectic structures on the same manifold. For most of my career I have been interested in questions of differential topology -- the study of spatial objects that are smooth enough for one to be able to use the methods of calculus. My work in the past 15 years has been almost exclusively in the realm of symplectic topology. Here one studies a special kind of structure on space called a symplectic structure, that generates the equations of classical physics for systems with conservation of energy (Hamilton's equations). In the past 15 years, I have assisted in the development of methods that allow one to understand the global geometric properties of this kind of structure.
Membership Type
Member
Election Year
1999
Primary Section
Section 11: Mathematics