Selman Akbulut

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.

Selman Akbulut
Selman Akbulut at Oberwolfach in 2012.
Born1949
Balıkesir, Turkey
NationalityTurkish
EducationUniversity of California
OccupationMathematician
Known forAkbulut cork

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 complaints regarding his teaching attendance 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). 4-manifolds. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198784869. 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 Archived 2013-01-06 at the Wayback Machine
  4. Graham, Karly; Monroe, Maddie. "Board of Trustees fires tenured professor for cause". The State News.
  5. Stanley, Samuel L. "Dismissal of Tenured Faculty for Cause" (PDF). MSU Board of Trustees. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
  6. Frost, Mikenzie (14 February 2020). "MSU Trustees dismiss tenured professor, address Title IX investigation delays". WWMT. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
  7. S. Akbulut, A solution to a conjecture of Zeeman, Topology, vol.30, no.3, (1991), 513-515.
  8. S. Akbulut, Scharlemann's manifold is standard, Ann of Math., 149 (1999) 497-510.
  9. S. Akbulut, Cappell-Shaneson homotopy spheres are standard Ann. of Math., 171 (2010) 2171-2175.
  10. S. Akbulut, Cappell-Shaneson's 4-dimensional s-cobordism, Geometry-Topology, vol.6, (2002), 425-494.
  11. M. Freedman, R. Gompf, S. Morrison, K. Walker, Man and machine thinking about the smooth 4-dimensional Poincaré conjecture. Quantum Topol. 1 (2010), no. 2, 171–208
  12. S. Akbulut, A Fake compact contractible 4-manifold, Journal of Differential Geometry 33, (1991), 335-356
  13. S. Akbulut, An exotic 4-manifold, Journ. of Diff. Geom. 33, (1991), 357-361
  14. B. Ozbagci and A.I. Stipsicz. Surgery on contact 3-manifolds and Stein surfaces (p. 14), Springer ISBN 3-540-22944-2
  15. A. Scorpan, The wild world of 4-manifolds (p.90), AMS Pub. ISBN 0-8218-3749-4
  16. Morrison, Scott. "Poincaré conjecture". Secret Blogging Seminar. Retrieved 13 August 2019.
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