Biography: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

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 disputes over his teaching allotments and communications with colleagues.[4][5][6]

Contributions

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

  1. ↑ Akbulut, Selman (2016) (in en). 4-manifolds. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198784869. https://books.google.com/books?id=1xMBDQAAQBAJ. 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
  4. ↑ Graham, Karly; Monroe, Maddie. "Board of Trustees fires tenured professor for cause" (in en-us). The State News. https://statenews.com/article/2020/02/board-of-trustees-fires-tenured-professor-for-cause?ct=content_open&cv=cbox_latest. 
  5. ↑ Stanley, Samuel L.. "Dismissal of Tenured Faculty for Cause". https://trustees.msu.edu/meetings/AA2-Dismissal%20of%20Tenured%20Facutly%20for%20Cause1.pdf. Retrieved 14 February 2020. 
  6. ↑ Frost, Mikenzie (14 February 2020). "MSU Trustees dismiss tenured professor, address Title IX investigation delays". WWMT. https://wwmt.com/news/state/msu-trustees-dismiss-tenured-professor-address-title-ix-investigation-delays. Retrieved 14 February 2020. 
  7. ↑ Akbulut, S. (1991). "A solution to a conjecture of Zeeman". Topology 30 (3): 513–515. doi:10.1016/0040-9383(91)90028-3. https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/0040938391900283. 
  8. ↑ Akbulut, S. (1999). "Scharlemann's Manifold is Standard". The Annals of Mathematics 149 (2): 497–510. doi:10.2307/120972. 
  9. ↑ Akbulut, S. (2010). "Cappell-Shaneson homotopy spheres are standard". Annals of Mathematics 171 (3): 2171–2175. doi:10.4007/annals.2010.171.2171. ISSN 0003-486X. http://annals.math.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/annals-v171-n3-p18-p.pdf. 
  10. ↑ Akbulut, S. (2002). "Cappell–Shaneson's 4–dimensional s –cobordism". Geometry & Topology 6 (1): 425–494. doi:10.2140/gt.2002.6.425. ISSN 1364-0380. http://msp.org/gt/2002/6-1/gt-v6-n1-p16-p.pdf. 
  11. ↑ Freedman, M.H.; Gompf, R.E.; Morrison, S.; Walker, K. (2010-06-22). "Man and machine thinking about the smooth 4-dimensional Poincaré conjecture". Quantum Topology 1 (2): 171–208. doi:10.4171/qt/5. ISSN 1663-487X. https://ems.press/content/serial-article-files/36744. 
  12. ↑ Akbulut, S. (1991-01-01). "A fake compact contractible 4-manifold". Journal of Differential Geometry 33 (2): 335–356. doi:10.4310/jdg/1214446320. ISSN 0022-040X. https://projecteuclid.org/journals/journal-of-differential-geometry/volume-33/issue-2/A-fake-compact-contractible-4-manifold/10.4310/jdg/1214446320.pdf. 
  13. ↑ Akbulut, S. (1991-01-01). "An exotic 4-manifold". Journal of Differential Geometry 33 (2): 357–361. doi:10.4310/jdg/1214446321. ISSN 0022-040X. 
  14. ↑ Ozbagci, B.; Stipsicz, A.I. (2004). Surgery on Contact 3-Manifolds and Stein Surfaces. Berlin: Springer Science & Business Media. p. 14. ISBN 978-3-540-22944-5. 
  15. ↑ Scorpan, A. (2005). The Wild World of 4-Manifolds. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Soc.. p. 90. ISBN 0-8218-3749-4. 
  16. ↑ Morrison, Scott (19 April 2011). "Mike Freedman on SPC4" (in en). http://sbseminar.wordpress.com/category/low-dimensional-topology/poincare-conjecture/. Retrieved 13 August 2019. 



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