Patrick Naylor wins Mathematics Doctoral Prize

Patrick Naylor, who recently completed a PhD in the Department of Pure Mathematics, has won first place in the 2022 Mathematics Doctoral Prize.

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.

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