The Mathematics Doctoral Prizes valued at $1500, $1000 and $500 are given annually to recognize the achievement of graduating doctoral students in the Faculty of Mathematics. Recipients are selected by a committee within the Faculty of Mathematics based on nominations received for consideration of the Governor General’s Gold Medal in March.
Naylor's dissertation studied four-dimensional objects (called manifolds) using three-dimensional techniques. Since the beginning of the 20th century, mathematicians have studied n-dimensional manifolds because of their fundamental connections to geometry, topology, physics and other branches of mathematics.
Despite
Fields
medal-winning
work
of
Freedman and
Donaldson
in
the
1980s,
dimension
four
still
remains
the
least well
understood.
Although
it
may
be
surprising,
higher
dimensions
are
in
some
sense
easier
to
study.
Naylor is currently working as a postdoctoral fellow in pure mathematics at Princeton.
Full story to follow...