Marc Lackenby

Lackenby in 1997

Marc Lackenby is a professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford whose research concerns knot theory, low-dimensional topology, and group theory.

Lackenby studied mathematics at the University of Cambridge beginning in 1990, and earned his Ph.D. in 1997, with a dissertation on Dehn Surgery and Unknotting Operations supervised by W. B. R. Lickorish.[1] After positions as Miller Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley and as Research Fellow at Cambridge, he joined Oxford as a Lecturer and Fellow of St Catherine's in 1999. He was promoted to Professor at Oxford in 2006.[2]

Lackenby's research contributions include a proof of a strengthened version of the 2π theorem on sufficient conditions for Dehn surgery to produce a hyperbolic manifold,[L00] a bound on the hyperbolic volume of a knot complement of an alternating knot,[L04] and a proof that every diagram of the unknot can be transformed into a diagram without crossings by only a polynomial number of Reidemeister moves.[L15] In February 2021 he announced a new unknot recognition algorithm that runs in quasi-polynomial time.[3]

Lackenby won the Whitehead Prize of the London Mathematical Society in 2003.[4] In 2006, he won the Philip Leverhulme Prize in mathematics and statistics.[5] He was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 2010.[6]

Selected publications

L00.
Lackenby, Marc (2000), "Word hyperbolic Dehn surgery", Inventiones Mathematicae, 140 (2): 243–282, arXiv:math/9808120, Bibcode:2000InMat.140..243L, doi:10.1007/s002220000047, MR 1756996.
L04.
Lackenby, Marc (2004), "The volume of hyperbolic alternating link complements", Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, Third Series, 88 (1): 204–224, arXiv:math/0012185, doi:10.1112/S0024611503014291, MR 2018964.
L15.
Lackenby, Marc (2015), "A polynomial upper bound on Reidemeister moves", Annals of Mathematics, Second Series, 182 (2): 491–564, arXiv:1302.0180, doi:10.4007/annals.2015.182.2.3, MR 3418524.

References

  1. ^ Marc Lackenby at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  2. ^ Lackenby, Marc (September 2015), Curriculum Vitae (PDF), retrieved 2016-01-21
  3. ^ Marc Lackenby announces a new unknot recognition algorithm that runs in quasi-polynomial time, Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, 2021-02-03, retrieved 2021-02-03
  4. ^ List of LMS prize winners, London Mathematical Society, retrieved 2016-01-21
  5. ^ Report of the Leverhulme Trustees (PDF), The Leverhulme Trust, 2006, retrieved 2016-01-21
  6. ^ ICM Plenary and Invited Speakers since 1897, International Mathematical Union, retrieved 2016-01-21.