2016 CRM-Fields-PIMS Prize Recipient
Dani Wise (McGill University) [ français ]

Video of the Daniel Wise conference on February 2, 2017.

Conference photos

TITLE : The Cubical Route to Understanding Groups
WHERE : CRM, UdeM, Pav. André-Aisenstadt, 2920, ch. de la Tour, room 6254
DATE : Thursday, February 2, 2017
TIME : 4:00 p.m.

ABSTRACT : Cube complexes have come to play an increasingly central role within
geometric group theory, as their connection to right-angled Artin groups provides a
powerful combinatorial bridge between geometry and algebra.

This talk will introduce nonpositively curved cube complexes, and then describe
the developments that have recently culminated in the resolution of the virtual
Haken conjecture for 3-manifolds, and simultaneously dramatically extended our
understanding of many infinite groups.

Coffee will be served before the conference and a reception will follow at Salon Maurice-L’Abbé (Room 6245).

Biographical notes

Dani Wise is widely recognized as one of the top geometric group theorists in the world.

His fundamental research contributions lie at the core of what is widely considered as the most important development in geometry and topology since Perelman's celebrated proof of the Poincaré Conjecture, namely the proof of Thurston's virtually fibered conjecture for hyperbolic three-manifolds. It has also been central to the resolution of major open problems such as Waldhausen's virtual Haken conjecture and Baumslag's famous 1968 conjecture which states that every one-relator group with torsion is residually finite. Over the past 40 years, the works of Thurston and Waldhausen have been central to the development of 3-manifold topology and hyperbolic geometry. The work of Wise followed a totally different direction, which he developed with exceptional insight and virtuosity over more than 15 years, leading to the spectacular results mentioned above.

The profound impact and originality of Wise's work have been recognized through major awards, most notably the Veblen Prize of the American Mathematical Society, which he shared in 2013 with Ian Agol (Berkeley). He delivered an invited address at the 2014 International Congress of Mathematicians in Seoul and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in Canada, also in 2014.

Dani Wise received his PhD from Princeton in 1996 and, following Postdoctoral positions at Berkeley and Cornell, joined the Mathematics department of McGill in 2001, where he is now James McGill Professor.