John W. Milnor
| John Willard Milnor | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
February 20, 1931 Orange, New Jersey |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | Stony Brook University |
| Alma mater | Princeton University |
| Doctoral advisor | Ralph Fox |
| Doctoral students |
Tadatoshi Akiba Jon Folkman John Mather Laurent C. Siebenmann Michael Spivak |
| Known for |
Exotic spheres Fary–Milnor theorem Milnor's theorem Milnor–Thurston kneading theory Surgery theory |
| Notable awards |
Putnam Fellow (1949, 1950) Sloan Fellowship (1955) Fields Medal (1962) National Medal of Science (1967) Leroy P Steele Prize (1982, 2004, 2011) Wolf Prize (1989) Abel Prize (2011) |
John Willard Milnor (born February 20, 1931) is an American mathematician known for his work in differential topology, K-theory and dynamical systems. Milnor is a distinguished professor at Stony Brook University and one of the five mathematicians to have won the Fields Medal, the Wolf Prize, and the Abel Prize (along with Michael Atiyah, Pierre Deligne, Jean-Pierre Serre, and John G. Thompson).
Milnor was born on February 20, 1931 in Orange, New Jersey. His father was J. Willard Milnor and his mother was Emily Cox Milnor. As an undergraduate at Princeton University he was named a Putnam Fellow in 1949 and 1950 and also proved the Fary–Milnor theorem. He continued on to graduate school at Princeton under the direction of Ralph Fox and submitted his dissertation, entitled "Isotopy of Links", which concerned link groups (a generalization of the classical knot group) and their associated link structure, in 1954. Upon completing his doctorate he went on to work at Princeton. He was a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study from 1970 to 1990.
His students have included Tadatoshi Akiba, Jon Folkman, John Mather, Laurent C. Siebenmann, and Michael Spivak. His wife, Dusa McDuff, is a professor of mathematics at Barnard College.
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