Jeffrey Weeks (mathematician)
American mathematician
Jeffrey Renwick Weeks (born December 10, 1956) is an American mathematician, a geometric topologist and cosmologist. Weeks is a 1999 MacArthur Fellow.
Biography
Weeks received his BA from Dartmouth College in 1978, and his PhD in mathematics from Princeton University in 1985, under the supervision of William Thurston. Since then he has taught at Stockton State College, Ithaca College, and Middlebury College, but has spent much of his time as a free-lance mathematician.
Research
Weeks' research contributions have mainly been in the field of 3-manifolds and physical cosmology.
The Weeks manifold, discovered in 1985 by Weeks, is the hyperbolic 3-manifold with the minimum possible volume. Weeks has written various computer programs to assist in mathematical research and mathematical visualization. His SnapPea program is used to study hyperbolic 3-manifolds, while he has also developed interactive software to introduce these ideas to middle-school, high-school, and college students.
Weeks is particularly interested in using topology to understand the spatial universe. His book The Shape of Space: How to Visualize Surfaces and Three-dimensional Manifolds (Marcel Dekker, 1985, ISBN 0-8247-7437-X) explores the geometry and topology of low-dimensional manifolds.
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