Jeffrey Weeks (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.[1]
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.[2] 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.[3][4] The
second edition (2002, ISBN 0-8247-0709-5) explains some of his work in applying the material to
cosmology.[5]
Awards and honors
Weeks became a MacArthur Fellow in 1999.[6] In 2007, he won the Levi L. Conant Prize for his
expository paper, "The Poincaré Dodecahedral Space and the Mystery of the Missing Fluctuations"
(Notices of the AMS 2004),[7] and in 2008 he gave the first Levi Conant Lecture at Conant's former
employer, the Worcester Polytechnic Institute.[1]
References
1. "2007 Conant Prize" (https://www.ams.org/notices/200704/comm-conant-web.pdf) (PDF),
Notices of the AMS, 54 (4): 519–520, 2007.
2. Overbye, Dennis (October 8, 2003), "New Model of the Universe: It's Shaped Like a
Soccerball" (https://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/08/science/08CND-COSMOS.html), The
New York Times.
3. Review by Thomas Banchoff (1987), Mathematical Reviews, MR0806764 (https://mathscine
t.ams.org/mathscinet-getitem?mr=0806764).
4. Review by Alan H. Durfee (1989), American Mathematical Monthly 96 (7): 660–662,
doi:10.2307/2325200 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F2325200).
5. Review (2002), Mathematical Reviews, MR1875835 (https://mathscinet.ams.org/mathscinet-
getitem?mr=1875835).
6. "The call of genius surprises winners of MacArthur grants", USA Today, June 23, 1999.
7. "The Poincaré Dodecahedral Space and the Mystery of the Missing Fluctuations" (https://w
ww.ams.org/journals/notices/200406/fea-weeks.pdf) (PDF), Notices of the AMS, 51 (6):
610–619, 2004.
External links
Jeffrey Weeks (https://mathgenealogy.org/id.php?id=83465) at the Mathematics Genealogy
Project
Weeks' Topology and Geometry software website (http://geometrygames.org/)
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