THURSTON, WILLIAM PAUL

born Oct. 30, 1946, Washington, D.C., U.S. American mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1983 for his work in topology. Thurston was educated at New College, Sarasota, Fla. (B.A., 1967), and the University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D., 1972). After a year at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J., he joined the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (197374), then moved to Princeton University, where he remained until 1991. In 1992 he became director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1996 he moved to the University of California, Davis. Thurston served on the Council of the American Mathematical Society (198184) and as its vice president (198788). Thurston was awarded the Fields Medal at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Warsaw in 1983 for his work in the topology of two and three dimensions. He extended geometric ideas from the theory of two-manifolds to the study of three-manifolds. The discrete isometry groups of hyperbolic three-space were investigated by Henri Poincar, who called them Kleinian groups. These were studied further by Lars Ahlfors, which led to his well-known finiteness theorem. Deformations of these groups were studied by Thurston, resulting in further advances in quasi-conformal maps. Thurston's publications include The Geometry and Topology of 3-Manifolds (1979) and Three-Dimensional Geometry and Topology (1997).