Education and Career
Thurston was born in Washington, D.C. to a homemaker and an aeronautical engineer. He received his bachelors degree from New College (now New College of Florida) in 1967. For his undergraduate thesis he developed an intuitionist foundation for topology. Following this, he earned a doctorate in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1972. His Ph.D. advisor was Morris W. Hirsch and his dissertation was on Foliations of Three-Manifolds which are Circle Bundles.
After completing his Ph.D., he spent a year at the Institute for Advanced Study, then another year at MIT as Assistant Professor. In 1974, he was appointed Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University. In 1991, he returned to UC-Berkeley as Professor of Mathematics and in 1993 became Director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. In 1996, he moved to University of California, Davis. In 2003, he moved again to become Professor of Mathematics at Cornell University.
His Ph.D. students include Richard Canary, Suyoung Choi, Renaud Dreyer, David Gabai, William Goldman, Benson Farb, Sergio Fenley, Detlef Hardorp, Craig Hodgson, Richard Kenyon, Steven Kerckhoff, Robert Meyerhoff, Yair Minsky, Lee Mosher, Igor Rivin, Nicolau Saldanha, Oded Schramm, Richard Schwartz, Martin Bridgeman, William Floyd and Jeffrey Weeks. His son Dylan Thurston is an associate professor of mathematics at Indiana University.
In later years Thurston turned his attention to mathematical education and bringing mathematics to the general public. He has served as mathematics editor for Quantum Magazine, a youth science magazine, and as head of The Geometry Center. As director of Mathematical Sciences Research Institute from 1992 to 1997, he initiated a number of programs designed to increase awareness of mathematics among the public.
In 2005 Thurston won the first AMS Book Prize, for Three-dimensional Geometry and Topology. The prize "recognizes an outstanding research book that makes a seminal contribution to the research literature".
In 2012 Thurston was awarded the Leroy P Steele Prize by the AMS for seminal contribution to research. The citation described his work as having "revolutionized 3-manifold theory".
He died on August 21, 2012 in Rochester, New York, of a melanoma that was diagnosed in 2011.
Thurston has an Erdős number of 2.
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