Cameron Gordon is a Professor

Professor

A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

 and Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chair in the Department of mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin

University of Texas at Austin

The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...

, known for his work in knot theory

Knot theory

In topology, knot theory is the study of mathematical knots. While inspired by knots which appear in daily life in shoelaces and rope, a mathematician's knot differs in that the ends are joined together so that it cannot be undone. In precise mathematical language, a knot is an embedding of a...

. Among his notable results is his work with Marc Culler

Marc Culler

Marc Edward Culler is an American mathematician who works in geometric group theory and low-dimensional topology. A native Californian, Culler did his undergraduate work at the University of California at Santa Barbara and his graduate work at Berkeley where he graduated in 1978. He is now at the...

, John Luecke, and Peter Shalen

Peter Shalen

Peter B. Shalen is an American mathematician, working primarily in low-dimensional topology. He is the "S" in JSJ decomposition.-Life:He graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1962, and went on to earn a B.A. from Harvard College in 1966 and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1972...

 on the cyclic surgery theorem

Cyclic surgery theorem

In three-dimensional topology, a branch of mathematics, the cyclic surgery theorem states that, for a compact, connected, orientable, irreducible three-manifold M whose boundary is a torus T, if M is not a Seifert-fibered space and r,s are slopes on T such that their Dehn fillings have cyclic...

. This was an important ingredient in his work with Luecke showing that knot

Knot (mathematics)

In mathematics, a knot is an embedding of a circle in 3-dimensional Euclidean space, R3, considered up to continuous deformations . A crucial difference between the standard mathematical and conventional notions of a knot is that mathematical knots are closed—there are no ends to tie or untie on a...

s were determined by their complement

Knot complement

In mathematics, the knot complement of a tame knot K is the complement of the interior of the embedding of a solid torus into the 3-sphere. To make this precise, suppose that K is a knot in a three-manifold M. Let N be a thickened neighborhood of K; so N is a solid torus...

. Gordon was also involved in the resolution of the Smith conjecture

Smith conjecture

In mathematics, the Smith conjecture states that if f is a diffeomorphism of the 3-sphere, of finite order then the fixed point set of f cannot be a nontrivial knot....

.

Andrew Casson

Andrew Casson

Andrew John Casson FRS is a mathematician, an expert on geometric topology.Casson is the Philip Schuyler Beebe Professor of Mathematics at Yale University in the United States where he served as department chair between 2004 and 2007. His Ph.D. advisor at the University of Liverpool was C. T. C...

  and Gordon defined and proved basic theorems regarding strongly irreducible Heegaard splitting

Heegaard splitting

In the mathematical field of geometric topology, a Heegaard splitting is a decomposition of a compact oriented 3-manifold that results from dividing it into two handlebodies.-Definitions:...

s, an important concept in the modernization of Heegaard splitting theory. They also worked on the slice-ribbon

Ribbon knot

In the mathematical area of knot theory, a ribbon knot is a knot that bounds a self-intersecting disc with only ribbon singularities. This type of singularity is a self-intersection along an arc; the preimage of this arc consists of two arcs in the disc, one properly embedded in the disc and the...

 conjecture, inventing the Casson-Gordon invariants in the process.

Gordon was a 1999 Guggenheim Fellow.
In 2005 Gordon was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh

Royal Society of Edinburgh

The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity, operating on a wholly independent and non-party-political basis and providing public benefit throughout Scotland...

.

External links

• Cameron Gordon's personal webpage, University of Texas at Austin
  University of Texas at Austin
  The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
  
  
• Cameron McAllan Gordon, Mathematics Genealogy Project
  Mathematics Genealogy Project
  The Mathematics Genealogy Project is a web-based database for the academic genealogy of mathematicians. As of September, 2010, it contained information on approximately 145,000 mathematical scientists who contribute to "research-level mathematics"...