John R. Stallings | |
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2006 photo of Stallings
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Born |
Morrilton, Arkansas, U.S. |
July 22, 1935
Died | November 24, 2008 Berkeley, California, U.S. |
(aged 73)
Nationality | United States |
Fields | Mathematics |
Institutions | University of California at Berkeley |
Alma mater |
University of Arkansas Princeton University |
Doctoral advisor | Ralph Fox |
Known for | proof of Poincaré Conjecture in dimensions greater than six; Stallings theorem about ends of groups |
Notable awards | Frank Nelson Cole Prize in Algebra (1971) |
John Robert Stallings Jr. (July 22, 1935 – November 24, 2008) was a mathematician known for his seminal contributions to geometric group theory and 3-manifold topology. Stallings was a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley where he had been a faculty member since 1967. He published over 50 papers, predominantly in the areas of geometric group theory and the topology of 3-manifolds. Stallings' most important contributions include a proof, in a 1960 paper, of the Poincaré Conjecture in dimensions greater than six and a proof, in a 1971 paper, of the Stallings theorem about ends of groups.
John Stallings was born on July 22, 1935 in Morrilton, Arkansas.
Stallings received his B.Sc. from University of Arkansas in 1956 (where he was one of the first two graduates in the university's Honors program) and he received a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Princeton University in 1959 under the direction of Ralph Fox.
After completing his PhD, Stallings held a number of postdoctoral and faculty positions, including being an NSF postdoctoral fellow at Oxford University as well as an instructorship and a faculty appointment at Princeton. Stallings joined the University of California at Berkeley as a faculty member in 1967 where he remained until his retirement in 1994. Even after his retirement, Stallings continued supervising UC Berkeley graduate students until 2005. Stallings was an Alfred P. Sloan Research fellow from 1962–65 and a Miller Institute fellow from 1972-73. Over the course of his career, Stallings had 22 doctoral students including Marc Culler and Hyam Rubinstein and 60 doctoral descendants. He published over 50 papers, predominantly in the areas of geometric group theory and the topology of 3-manifolds.