Michael Handel
American mathematician
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Michael Handel is an American mathematician known for his work in Geometric group theory. He is a professor in the Department of Mathematics at Lehman College of the City University of New York and a professor of mathematics at the CUNY Graduate Center.
University of California, Berkeley (PhD)
Michael Handel | |
|---|---|
| Born | |
| Alma mater | Brandeis University (BA) University of California, Berkeley (PhD) |
| Known for | Dynamical Systems |
| Awards | |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | Lehman College CUNY Graduate Center |
| Thesis | A Resolution of Two Stratification Conjectures Concerning CS Sets (1975) |
| Doctoral advisor | Robion Kirby |
Career
Michael Handel graduated with a B.A. in mathematics from Brandeis University in 1971.[1] He received his Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley, in 1975 under the supervision of Robion Kirby.[2] From 1975 to 1978, he was an instructor at Princeton University. He joined the faculty of Michigan State University as an assistant professor in 1978,[3] and was promoted to associate professor in 1983.[4] Handel was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study from 1978 to 1979, and again from 1987 to 1988.[5] In 1990, he joined the Mathematics Department at Lehman College.
Handel is best known for developing the Train track map method in Geometric group theory in collaboration with Mladen Bestvina in 1992.[6] Bestvina, Feighn and Handel later proved that the group Out(Fn) satisfies the Tits alternative, settling a long-standing open problem.[7][8]
Awards and honors
- In 1984, Handel won a Sloan Research Fellowship.[9]
- In 2014, he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.[10][11]
Selected publications
- Handel, Michael. "One Dimensional Minimal Sets and the Seifert Conjecture ". Annals of Mathematics (2) 111 (1980), number 1, pages 35–66. DOI:10.2307/1971216
- Feighn, Mark; Handel, Michael. "Mapping tori of free group automorphisms are coherent". Annals of Mathematics (2) 149 (1999), number 3, pages 1061–1077. MR 1709311
- Bestvina, Mladen; Feighn, Mark; Handel, Michael. The Tits alternative for Out(Fn). I. Dynamics of exponentially-growing automorphisms. Annals of Mathematics (2), volume 151 (2000), number 2, pages 517–623
- Bestvina, Mladen; Feighn, Mark; Handel, Michael. The Tits alternative for Out(Fn). II. A Kolchin type theorem. Annals of Mathematics (2), volume 161 (2005), number 1, pages 1–59 MR 2150382
- Handel, Michael; Mosher, Lee. "The free splitting complex of a free group, I: hyperbolicity". Geometry & Topology 17 (2013), number 3, pages 1581–1672. MR 3073931