Efstratia (Effie) Kalfagianni is a Greek American mathematician specializing in low-dimensional topology.
Kalfagianni graduated from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in October 1987. After earning a master's degree in 1990 at Fordham University, she moved to Columbia University for doctoral studies, earning a second master's degree in 1991 and completing her Ph.D. in 1995. Her dissertation, Finite Type Invariants for Knots in 3-Manifolds, was supervised by Joan Birman and Xiao-Song Lin. [1]
After postdoctoral study at the Institute for Advanced Study and three years as Hill Assistant Professor at Rutgers University, she moved to Michigan State University in 1998. She was promoted to full professor in 2008 and received the MSU William J. Beal Outstanding Faculty Award in 2019. [2] [3]
Kalfagianni has made contributions in knot theory, three-manifolds, hyperbolic geometry, quantum topology and the interplay of these fields. She contributed on the relations of the Jones polynomial [4] to Hyperbolic volumes of knots and on the Volume conjecture for Quantum invariants [5] [6] of 3-manifolds. With David Futer and Jessica Purcell, Kalfagianni is co-author of the research monograph Guts of Surfaces and the Colored Jones Polynomial (Lecture Notes in Mathematics 2069, Springer, 2013) that derives relations between colored Jones polynomials, the topology of incompressible spanning surfaces in knot and link complements and hyperbolic geometry. [7]
Kalfagianni is an editor for the New York Journal of Mathematics . [8] and an Academic Editor for the Journal of Knot Theory and its Ramifications. [9] She was also one of the editors of the book Interactions Between Hyperbolic Geometry, Quantum Topology and Number Theory (Contemporary Mathematics Volume: 541, AMS, 2011) . [10]
Kalfagianni was a member [11] at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1994–1995 in 2004–2005 and in the Fall term of 2019 [3] . In 2019 she became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society ``For contributions to knot theory and 3-dimensional topology, and for mentoring" . [12]
In the mathematical field of knot theory, a knot invariant is a quantity (in a broad sense) defined for each knot which is the same for equivalent knots. The equivalence is often given by ambient isotopy but can be given by homeomorphism. Some invariants are indeed numbers (algebraic), but invariants can range from the simple, such as a yes/no answer, to those as complex as a homology theory (for example, "a knot invariant is a rule that assigns to any knot K a quantity φ(K) such that if K and K' are equivalent then φ(K) = φ(K')."). Research on invariants is not only motivated by the basic problem of distinguishing one knot from another but also to understand fundamental properties of knots and their relations to other branches of mathematics. Knot invariants are thus used in knot classification, both in "enumeration" and "duplication removal".
A knot invariant is a quantity defined on the set of all knots, which takes the same value for any two equivalent knots. For example, a knot group is a knot invariant.
Typically a knot invariant is a combinatorial quantity defined on knot diagrams. Thus if two knot diagrams differ with respect to some knot invariant, they must represent different knots. However, as is generally the case with topological invariants, if two knot diagrams share the same values with respect to a [single] knot invariant, then we still cannot conclude that the knots are the same.
In mathematics, low-dimensional topology is the branch of topology that studies manifolds, or more generally topological spaces, of four or fewer dimensions. Representative topics are the structure theory of 3-manifolds and 4-manifolds, knot theory, and braid groups. This can be regarded as a part of geometric topology. It may also be used to refer to the study of topological spaces of dimension 1, though this is more typically considered part of continuum theory.
Sir Simon Kirwan Donaldson is an English mathematician known for his work on the topology of smooth (differentiable) four-dimensional manifolds, Donaldson–Thomas theory, and his contributions to Kähler geometry. He is currently a permanent member of the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook University in New York, and a Professor in Pure Mathematics at Imperial College London.
In the mathematical field of knot theory, the Jones polynomial is a knot polynomial discovered by Vaughan Jones in 1984. Specifically, it is an invariant of an oriented knot or link which assigns to each oriented knot or link a Laurent polynomial in the variable with integer coefficients.
Algorithmic topology, or computational topology, is a subfield of topology with an overlap with areas of computer science, in particular, computational geometry and computational complexity theory.
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In mathematics, Floer homology is a tool for studying symplectic geometry and low-dimensional topology. Floer homology is a novel invariant that arises as an infinite-dimensional analogue of finite-dimensional Morse homology. Andreas Floer introduced the first version of Floer homology, now called Lagrangian Floer homology, in his proof of the Arnold conjecture in symplectic geometry. Floer also developed a closely related theory for Lagrangian submanifolds of a symplectic manifold. A third construction, also due to Floer, associates homology groups to closed three-dimensional manifolds using the Yang–Mills functional. These constructions and their descendants play a fundamental role in current investigations into the topology of symplectic and contact manifolds as well as (smooth) three- and four-dimensional manifolds.
In knot theory, a virtual knot is a generalization of knots in 3-dimensional Euclidean space, R3, to knots in thickened surfaces modulo an equivalence relation called stabilization/destabilization. Here is required to be closed and oriented. Virtual knots were first introduced by Kauffman (1999).
Clifford Henry Taubes is the William Petschek Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University and works in gauge field theory, differential geometry, and low-dimensional topology. His brother is the journalist Gary Taubes.
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Knots have been used for basic purposes such as recording information, fastening and tying objects together, for thousands of years. The early significant stimulus in knot theory would arrive later with Sir William Thomson and his vortex theory of the atom.
Tomasz Mrowka is an American mathematician specializing in differential geometry and gauge theory. He is the Singer Professor of Mathematics and former head of the Department of Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In the mathematical field of knot theory, a quantum knot invariant or quantum invariant of a knot or link is a linear sum of colored Jones polynomial of surgery presentations of the knot complement.
Carolyn S. Gordon is a mathematician and Benjamin Cheney Professor of Mathematics at Dartmouth College. She is most well known for giving a negative answer to the question "Can you hear the shape of a drum?" in her work with David Webb and Scott A. Wolpert. She is a Chauvenet Prize winner and a 2010 Noether Lecturer.
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Igor Rivin is a Russian-Canadian mathematician, working in various fields of pure and applied mathematics, computer science, and materials science. He was the Regius Professor of Mathematics at the University of St. Andrews from 2015 to 2017, and was the chief research officer at Cryptos Fund until 2019. He is doing research for Edgestream LP, in addition to his academic work.
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In the mathematical field of quantum topology, the Reshetikhin–Turaev invariants (RT-invariants) are a family of quantum invariants of framed links. Such invariants of framed links also give rise to invariants of 3-manifolds via the Dehn surgery construction. These invariants were discovered by Nicolai Reshetikhin and Vladimir Turaev in 1991, and were meant to be a mathematical realization of Witten's proposed invariants of links and 3-manifolds using quantum field theory.