The conference "What Next? The Mathematical Legacy of Bill Thurston" will be held at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York on June 23-27, 2014. Bill Thurston was one of the most profound and influential mathematical thinkers of our time. He made fundamental contributions to a wide variety of mathematical disciplines, but perhaps even more importantly he introduced new ways of thinking about and of seeing mathematics. The connections he discovered between disciplines broadened people's perspective and changed the way they approach problems. He also had a deep interest in communicating mathematics and many ideas about how this should be done. This meeting will bring together mathematicians from many different areas to share recent advances and explore future directions motivated by Thurston's transformative ideas. The meeting will include events featuring different ways of communicating mathematics, both to other mathematicians and to the general public.
This award supports participation by junior researchers and invited speakers in this large conference, which is centered on the fundamental contributions of Bill Thurston to topology, geometry, and dynamical systems. The goal of this meeting is to bring together mathematicians from a broad spectrum of areas to describe recent advances and explore future directions motivated by Thurston's transformative ideas. Video archives of conference presentations will be made available online. Details about the conference are available at the web site www.math.cornell.edu/~thurston.
