{"id":17732,"date":"2024-12-04T22:36:40","date_gmt":"2024-12-04T23:36:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=17732"},"modified":"2024-12-05T00:24:37","modified_gmt":"2024-12-05T00:24:37","slug":"richard-hamilton-who-helped-solve-a-mathematical-mystery-dies-at-81","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=17732","title":{"rendered":"Richard Hamilton, Who Helped Solve a Mathematical Mystery, Dies at 81"},"content":{"rendered":"
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He came up with an innovative equation called the Ricci flow that helped mathematicians explore fundamental questions that were once out of reach.<\/p>\n

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Richard Hamilton, an inventive mathematician who devised the Ricci flow, a groundbreaking equation that helped advance understanding of the fundamental nature of three-dimensional space, died on Sept. 29 in Manhattan. He was 81.<\/p>\n

The death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his son, Andrew. Dr. Hamilton had taught at Columbia University since 1998.<\/p>\n

In 1982, Dr. Hamilton published \u201cThree-manifolds with positive Ricci curvature<\/a>\u201d in The Journal of Differential Geometry. The article laid out his revolutionary theory: a kind of geometric analog to the heat equation in physics.<\/p>\n

While the heat equation described how heat diffuses throughout space, as hot spots gradually merge with cooler regions, resulting in temperature equilibrium, the Ricci flow (named after the 19th-century Italian mathematician Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro) offered a model for understanding how irregular shapes can smooth themselves out, evolving into spheres.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Dr. Hamilton then went on to tackle an even more challenging problem: the Poincar\u00e9 conjecture<\/a>, which sought to understand the basic shape of three-dimensional space.<\/p>\n

Initially posed by the French polymath Henri Poincar\u00e9<\/a> in 1904, the conjecture hypothesized that any three-dimensional shape that was finite and closed, without any holes, could be deformed or stretched into a perfect sphere. In 2000, the nonprofit Clay Mathematics Institute made it a Millennium Prize problem, offering $1 million for a successful solution.<\/p>\n

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He came up with an innovative equation called the Ricci flow that helped mathematicians explore fundamental questions that were once out of reach.Richard Hamilton, an inventive mathematician who devised the Ricci flow, a groundbreaking equation that helped advance understanding of the fundamental nature of three-dimensional space, died on Sept. 29 in Manhattan. He was 81.The death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his son, Andrew. Dr. Hamilton had taught at Columbia University since 1998.In 1982, Dr. Hamilton published \u201cThree-manifolds with positive Ricci curvature\u201d in The Journal of Differential Geometry. The article laid out his revolutionary theory: a kind of geometric analog to the heat equation in physics.While the heat equation described how heat diffuses throughout space, as hot spots gradually merge with cooler regions, resulting in temperature equilibrium, the Ricci flow (named after the 19th-century Italian mathematician Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro) offered a model for understanding how irregular shapes can smooth themselves out, evolving into spheres.Dr. Hamilton then went on to tackle an even more challenging problem: the Poincar\u00e9 conjecture, which sought to understand the basic shape of three-dimensional space.Initially posed by the French polymath Henri Poincar\u00e9 in 1904, the conjecture hypothesized that any three-dimensional shape that was finite and closed, without any holes, could be deformed or stretched into a perfect sphere. In 2000, the nonprofit Clay Mathematics Institute made it a Millennium Prize problem, offering $1 million for a successful solution.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17734,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17732"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17735,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17732\/revisions\/17735"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}