OSU conference recognizes contributions of math professor

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

A conference honoring Oklahoma State University Math Regents Professor William Jaco recently was held on the Stillwater campus. The conference was titled “Topology and Geometry in Dimension Three: Triangulations, Invariants, and Geometric Structures” and was promoted as the “Jacofest” because of the professor’s well-known research focusing on 3-manifolds.

Jaco is a co-discover of the JSJ Decomposition, which was named for its discoverers Jaco, University of Chicago at Illinois professor Peter Shalen and German mathematician Klaus Johannsen. More than 90 scholars were in attendance at the conference. In recognition of his contributions to topology, Jaco was presented with a gift from current and former students. The gift represents a building-block of the triangulations technique used in topology, an area in which Jaco is expert. The OSU Department of Mathematics is one of 24 departments in the College of Arts & Sciences. To learn more visit http://cas.okstate.edu.