Department of Mathematics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
& Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
Gabai + (Thurston-Eliashberg) + Witten + (Feehan-Leness) +
Floer + Giroux + Eliashberg => Property P
Recent progress in
understanding symplectic four-manifolds
has led to the resolution of some long-standing questions
about three manifolds. For example one can now show
(independently of Perelman's work) that non trivial surgery on a
non-trivial knot can never yield a counter-example to the
Poincar'e conjecture. Indeed one can show that the manifolds
obtained in this manner always admit non-trivial representations of
their fundamental groups in to SU(2). The title of talk refers
the mathematicians whose results are used in the proof.