Selman Akbulut

Selman Akbulut at Oberwolfach in 2012

Selman Akbulut (born 1949) is a Turkish mathematician and a Professor at Michigan State University. His research is in topology.

Career

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 has developed 4-dimensional handlebody techniques, settling conjectures and solving problems about 4-manifolds, such as a conjecture of Christopher Zeeman,[3] the Harer–Kas–Kirby conjecture, a problem of Martin Scharlemann,[4] and problems of Sylvain Cappell and Julius Shaneson.[5][6][7] He constructed an exotic compact 4-manifold (with boundary) from which he discovered "Akbulut corks".[8][9][10][11]

His most recent results concern the 4-dimensional smooth Poincaré conjecture.[12] He has supervised 12 Ph.D students as of 2016. He has more than 100 papers and three books published, and several books edited.

He was a visiting scholar several times at the Institute for Advanced Study (in 1975-76, 1980–81, 2002, and 2005).[13]

Notes

  1. ↑ S. Akbulut, 4-Manifolds , Oxford University Press ISBN 9780198784869 https://books.google.com/books?id=1xMBDQAAQBAJ
  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. ↑ S. Akbulut, A solution to a conjecture of Zeeman, Topology, vol.30, no.3, (1991), 513-515.
  4. ↑ S. Akbulut, Scharlemann's manifold is standard, Ann of Math., 149 (1999) 497-510.
  5. ↑ S. Akbulut, Cappell-Shaneson homotopy spheres are standard Ann. of Math., 171 (2010) 2171-2175.
  6. ↑ S. Akbulut, Cappell-Shaneson's 4-dimensional s-cobordism, Geometry-Topology, vol.6, (2002), 425-494.
  7. ↑ 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
  8. ↑ S. Akbulut, A Fake compact contractible 4-manifold, Journal of Differential Geometry 33, (1991), 335-356
  9. ↑ S. Akbulut, An exotic 4-manifold, Journ. of Diff. Geom. 33, (1991), 357-361
  10. ↑ B. Ozbagci and A.I. Stipsicz. Surgery on contact 3-manifolds and Stein surfaces (p. 14), Springer ISBN 3-540-22944-2
  11. ↑ A. Scorpan, The wild world of 4-manifolds (p.90), AMS Pub. ISBN 0-8218-3749-4
  12. ↑ http://sbseminar.wordpress.com/category/low-dimensional-topology/poincare-conjecture/
  13. ↑ Institute for Advanced Study: A Community of Scholars Archived 2013-01-06 at the Wayback Machine.
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