David B. A. Epstein

David Bernard Alper Epstein ( born 1937 ) is a British mathematician who is concerned with geometry and group theory.

Epstein received his doctorate in 1960 at Cambridge University in Erik Christopher Zeeman (Three Dimensional Manifolds ). With Zeeman he was involved in the founding of the mathematical faculty of the University of Warwick in the 1960s. He is now Professor Emeritus in Warwick.

He deals with hyperbolic geometry, foliations ( where he solved a long open problem on one-dimensional foliations ), geometry of three-dimensional manifolds and group theory (theory of automatic groups, with James Cannon, Derek Holt ).

He also deals with the use of computers in geometry and is co-founder of the Geometry Supercomputing Project ( Geometry Center ), University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. He was in 1992 with Silvio Levy and Klaus Peters founder and editor of the journal Experimental Mathematics.

In the 2000s he also conducted research on diabetes.

In 1988 he was awarded the Senior Berwick Prize of the London Mathematical Society. In 2004 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1962 he was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Stockholm ( Steenrod operations in abelian categories ). He is a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society.

He should not be confused with the computer scientist and mathematician David Eppstein.

Writings

• Curves on 2- manifolds and isotopies. Acta Math 115 1966 83-107
• Periodic flows on three- manifolds. Ann. of Math ( 2) 1972 95 66-82.
• With E. Vogt: A counterexample to the periodic orbit conjecture in codimension 3 Ann. of Math ( 2) 108 (1978 ), no 3, 539-552.
• With A. Marden: Convex hulls in hyperbolic space, a theorem of Sullivan, and Measured pleated surfaces. Analytical and geometric aspects of hyperbolic space (Coventry / Durham, 1984), 113-253, London Math Soc. Lecture Note Ser. , 111, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1987.
• With Richard Canary, P. Green: Notes on notes of Thurston. Analytical and geometric aspects of hyperbolic space (Coventry / Durham, 1984), 3-92, London Math Soc. Lecture Note Ser. , 111, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1987.
• With R. Penner: Euclidean decompositions of noncompact hyperbolic manifolds. J. Differential Geom 27 (1988 ), no 1, 67-80.
• With James Cannon, Derek Holt, Silvio Levy, Michael Paterson, William Thurston: Word Processing in Groups, Boston, Jones and Bartlett 1992