Mathematician:John Willard Milnor

American mathematician best known for his work in differential topology.

Nationality
American

History

 * Born: 20th February 1931, Orange, New Jersey, USA.
 * 1949, 1950: Named a Putnam Fellow while at Princeton
 * 1951: Graduated from Princeton
 * 1962: Awarded Fields Medal
 * 1967: Awarded National Medal of Science
 * 1982: Awarded Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research
 * 1989: Awarded Wolf Prize in Mathematics
 * 2004: Awarded Leroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition
 * 2011: Awarded Leroy P. Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement


 * 2011: Awarded Abel Prize for his "pioneering discoveries in topology, geometry and algebra"

Theorems, Definitions and Conjectures

 * Fary-Milnor Theorem (proved independently of István Fáry)
 * Milnor Conjecture (Algebraic K-Theory)
 * Milnor Conjecture (Knot Theory)
 * Milnor Conjecture (Manifolds)
 * Milnor Fibration (also known as a Milnor Map)
 * Milnor-Thurston Kneading Theory (with William Thurston)


 * Disproved the Hauptvermutung

Books, Publications, etc.

 * 1950: On the Total Curvature of Knots
 * 1954: Isotopy of Links (doctoral thesis)
 * 1956: On Manifolds Homeomorphic to the 7-Sphere
 * 1959: Sommes de Variétés Différentiables et Structures Différentiables des Sphères
 * 1959: Differentiable Structures on Spheres
 * 1961: Two Complexes which are Homeomorphic but Combinatorially Distinct (in which he disproved the Hauptvermutung)
 * 1963: Morse theory
 * 1963: Groups of Homotopy Spheres (with Michel A. Kervaire)
 * 1965: Lectures on the h-Cobordism Theorem
 * 1965: Topology from the Differentiable Viewpoint (2nd edition 1997)
 * 1968: Singular Points of Complex Hypersurfaces
 * 1971: Introduction to Algebraic K-Theory
 * 1973: Symmetric Bilinear Forms (with Dale Husemoller)
 * 1974: Characteristic Classes (with James D. Stasheff)
 * 1999: Dynamics in One Complex Variable