The Research of Thomas P. Branson

This dissertation contains a comprehensive study of the topology of 2-manifolds and a complementary analysis of the work done by Edwin E. Moise, L. V. Ahlfors and Ian Richards. Our aim is to study the well known classification of surfaces. Here we present the technical tools needed for proving rigorously the classification theorem and give a detailed proof using these tools.

This article has been withdrawn due to a mistake which is explained in version 2.

We explicitly construct small triangulations for a number of well-known 3-dimensional manifolds and give a brief outline of some aspects of the underlying theory of 3-manifolds and its historical development.

Plank problems concern the covering of convex bodies by planks in Euclidean space and are related to famous open problems in convex geometry. In this survey, we introduce plank problems and present surprising applications of plank theorems in various areas of mathematics.

On June 5, 2007 the second author delivered a talk at the Journees de l'Institut Elie Cartan entitled "Finite symmetry groups in complex geometry". This paper begins with an expanded version of that talk which, in the spirit of the Journees, is intended for a wide audience. The later paragraphs are devoted both to the exposition of basic methods, in particular an equivariant minimal model program for surfaces, as well as an outline of recent work of the authors on the classif...

A homage to the life and mathematics of John K. S. McKay. Obituary for the Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society.

Recollections of the Austrian geometer Heinrich Brauner (in German).

Survey talk on certain aspects of the subject, stressing the neighbor relation as a basic notion in differential geometry.

Hans Duistermaat was scheduled to lecture in the 2010 School on Poisson Geometry at IMPA, but passed away suddenly. This is a record of a talk I gave at the 2010 Conference on Poisson Geometry (the week after the School) to share some of my memories of him and to give a brief assessment of his impact on the subject.

This extensive survey is an invited contribution to the Encyclopedia of Mathematical Physics, 2nd edition. It covers both classical and more modern aspects of configuration spaces of points on a "ground space" $M$. Most results pertain to $M$ a manifold. Configuration spaces of points have become so omnipresent in so many areas of mathematics, physics, and even the applied sciences, that a survey can only cover a selection of topics. We review key ideas, constructions, and re...