The GEOMETRY of Everything Is Only 8 Shapes — and One MAN Found Them All #migoroedu #mathhistory

Comments · 110

• MI

  @migoroedu · 4 months ago · pinned

  Which part of Thurston&apos;s story is more mind-bending: that he revolutionized 3D space without being able to see it, or that he &quot;cleaned out&quot; an entire field of math so thoroughly that other researchers had to quit? &nbsp;<br><br>I’d love to hear your thoughts—and if you’ve ever had a &quot;spatial epiphany&quot; of your own, let&apos;s discuss it below.

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• MS

  @msplateaugal · 3 months ago

  I wrote my first paper as a first-year graduate student, and it was on foliations. Around that time, Thurston began solving one open problem after another in the field, and people joked that he was “killing foliations” by solving all the interesting questions. So I moved on to other fertile areas of mathematics.<br><br>I was very saddened to learn of his passing at only 65. He was not only a brilliant mathematician, but also a kind person with a wonderful sense of humor. Those of us who were around during that era will never forget the impact he had on mathematics and on the people who knew him.

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• BR

  @BretFromPhilly · 4 months ago

  Never heard of him until now

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• AL

  @alainterieur7583 · 4 months ago

  Amazing that this guy is not known by everyone with a vague interest in math.

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• IA

  @iamurpal2309 · 4 months ago

  The most incredible part of Thurston’s story is that he turned a limitation into a completely different way of seeing. Most people use their eyes to understand space. Thurston rebuilt space inside his mind and ended up seeing things that generations of mathematicians had missed. That’s not just intelligence—that’s a different mode of perception.

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• KR

  @krystianrosinski4569 · 3 months ago

  Niesamowita historia. Chylę czoła.

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• AN

  @AnnaPeel-h9t · 3 months ago

  Thurston mother... she gave him the greatest gifts

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• N-

  @n-da-bunka2650 · 1 month ago

  Astounding! &nbsp;Thank you for this great summary!

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• EU

  @eureka1512 · 3 months ago

  Conjecture: Russian government has forced Perelman to reject the prizes as an ideological stunt. They have paid him more than that quietly.

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• MA

  @martincohen8991 · 4 months ago

  I have that vision problem also. I think it happened when, at 2 and 4 years old, I had surgery for being cross-eyed and had my eye (or eyes) covered. My eyes never learned to fuse the images. Now, at 80, I find this very useful instead of being a problem.

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• ZI

  @zizanioides · 2 months ago

  Beautiful

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• ME

  @mennolauret1110 · 4 months ago

  It is actually a known phenomenon that blind and visual impaired mathematicians tend to be geometers. Main reasons appeal to be that algebra requires keeping track of many steps while geometry is more compressed and that visual projected intuïtioncan also &nbsp;be misleading. Being forced to mentally visualize geometry from the basics becomes a power. I think the AMS notes or the Nieuw Archief van de Wiskunde published a paper on blind mathematicians &nbsp;10-20 yeara &nbsp;ago.

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