Contact: Aru Ray
In the 1970s, Bill Thurston proposed a program to understand 3-manifolds from a geometric perspective as a way to address outstanding topological questions. After Perelman, we know most 3-manifolds are hyperbolic, but the existence of such a geometric structure leaves a great deal of geometric information about the structure unclear. In this talk I will describe a broad effort to classify three-manifolds geometrically in terms of topological data and its implications for the larger question of how to extract geometric information directly from topological and combinatorial data specifying a 3-manifold.
This talk will be expository and aimed at a general geometry & topology audience.
Links:
[1] http://www.mpim-bonn.mpg.de/taxonomy/term/39
[2] http://www.mpim-bonn.mpg.de/node/3444
[3] http://www.mpim-bonn.mpg.de/node/12018