Morwen Thistlethwaite

Morwen Thistlethwaite
Nationality	British
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	University of Tennessee
Alma mater	University of Manchester University of London University of Cambridge
Doctoral advisor	Michael George Barratt

Morwen B. Thistlethwaite is a knot theorist and professor of mathematics for the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He has made important contributions to both knot theory and Rubik's Cube group theory.

Morwen Thistlethwaite received his BA from the University of Cambridge in 1967, his MSc from the University of London in 1968, and his PhD from the University of Manchester in 1972 where his advisor was Michael Barratt. He studied piano with Tanya Polunin, James Gibb and Balint Vazsonyi, giving concerts in London before deciding to pursue a career in mathematics in 1975. He taught at the North London Polytechnic from 1975 to 1978 and the Polytechnic of the South Bank, London from 1978 to 1987. He served as a visiting professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara for a year before going to the University of Tennessee, where he currently is a professor. Thistlethwaite's son Oliver is also a mathematician.

Morwen Thistlethwaite helped prove the Tait conjectures, which are:

Morwen Thistlethwaite, along with Louis Kauffman and K. Murasugi proved the first two Tait conjectures in 1987 and Thistlethwaite and William Menasco proved the Tait flyping conjecture in 1991.