Selman Akbulut

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Selman Akbulut
Selman Akbulut at Oberwolfach in 2012.
Born1949
Balıkesir, Turkey
NationalityTurkish
EducationUniversity of California
OccupationMathematician
Known forAkbulut cork

Selman Akbulut (born 1949) is a Turkish mathematician, specializing in research in topology, and geometry. He was a professor at Michigan State University until February 2020.

Career[edit]

In 1975 he earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley as a student of Robion Kirby. In topology, he has worked on handlebody theory, low-dimensional manifolds,[1] symplectic topology, G2 manifolds. In the topology of real-algebraic sets, he and Henry C. King proved that every compact piecewise-linear manifold is a real-algebraic set; they discovered new topological invariants of real-algebraic sets.[2]

He was a visiting scholar several times at the Institute for Advanced Study (in 1975-76, 1980–81, 2002, and 2005).[3]

On February 14, 2020, Akbulut was removed from his tenured position at MSU by the Board of Trustees, after complaints regarding his teaching attendance and communications with colleagues.[4][5][6]

Contributions[edit]

He has developed 4-dimensional handlebody techniques, settling conjectures and solving problems about 4-manifolds, such as a conjecture of Christopher Zeeman,[7] the Harer–Kas–Kirby conjecture, a problem of Martin Scharlemann,[8] and problems of Sylvain Cappell and Julius Shaneson.[9][10][11] He constructed an exotic compact 4-manifold (with boundary) from which he discovered "Akbulut corks".[12][13][14][15]

His most recent results concern the 4-dimensional smooth Poincaré conjecture.[16] He has supervised 14 Ph.D students as of 2019. He has more than 100 papers and three books published, and several books edited.

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ Akbulut, Selman (2016). 4-manifolds. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198784869. Retrieved 13 August 2019.
  2. ^ S. Akbulut and H.C. King, Topology of real algebraic sets, MSRI Publications, 25. Springer-Verlag, New York (1992) ISBN 0-387-97744-9
  3. ^ Institute for Advanced Study: A Community of Scholars Archived 2013-01-06 at the Wayback Machine
  4. ^ Graham, Karly; Monroe, Maddie. "Board of Trustees fires tenured professor for cause". The State News.
  5. ^ Stanley, Samuel L. "Dismissal of Tenured Faculty for Cause" (PDF). MSU Board of Trustees. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
  6. ^ Frost, Mikenzie (14 February 2020). "MSU Trustees dismiss tenured professor, address Title IX investigation delays". WWMT. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
  7. ^ S. Akbulut, A solution to a conjecture of Zeeman, Topology, vol.30, no.3, (1991), 513-515.
  8. ^ S. Akbulut, Scharlemann's manifold is standard, Ann of Math., 149 (1999) 497-510.
  9. ^ S. Akbulut, Cappell-Shaneson homotopy spheres are standard Ann. of Math., 171 (2010) 2171-2175.
  10. ^ S. Akbulut, Cappell-Shaneson's 4-dimensional s-cobordism, Geometry-Topology, vol.6, (2002), 425-494.
  11. ^ M. Freedman, R. Gompf, S. Morrison, K. Walker, Man and machine thinking about the smooth 4-dimensional Poincaré conjecture. Quantum Topol. 1 (2010), no. 2, 171–208
  12. ^ S. Akbulut, A Fake compact contractible 4-manifold, Journal of Differential Geometry 33, (1991), 335-356
  13. ^ S. Akbulut, An exotic 4-manifold, Journ. of Diff. Geom. 33, (1991), 357-361
  14. ^ B. Ozbagci and A.I. Stipsicz. Surgery on contact 3-manifolds and Stein surfaces (p. 14), Springer ISBN 3-540-22944-2
  15. ^ A. Scorpan, The wild world of 4-manifolds (p.90), AMS Pub. ISBN 0-8218-3749-4
  16. ^ Morrison, Scott. "Poincaré conjecture". Secret Blogging Seminar. Retrieved 13 August 2019.

External links[edit]

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