William Floyd (mathematician)

William J. Floyd is an American mathematician who deals with low-dimensional topology and geometric group theory.

Floyd in 1978 with William Thurston at Princeton University PhD (Group completions and limit sets of Kleinian groups). In his dissertation he led Floyd edges a ( a compactification finitely generated groups). He is a professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute.

With Steven Kerckhoff he wrote down most of the influential lecture by Thurston Geometry and Topology of 3- Manifolds from 1978/79. In the 2000s he focused on attempts to prove the conjecture of James W. Cannon (1998) in the geometric group theory (along with Cannon himself and Walter Parry, method of finite subdivision rules).

Writings

• With Allen Hatcher Incompressible surfaces in punctured - torus bundles, Topology and its Applications, Volume 13, 1982, p 263-282
• With Cannon, Parry Finite subdivision rules, Conformal Geometry and Dynamics, Volume 5, 2001, pp. 153-196.