Michael Handel

American mathematician

Alfred P. Sloan Fellow
Fellow of the American Mathematical Society

Scientific careerFieldsMathematicsInstitutionsLehman College
CUNY Graduate CenterThesis A Resolution of Two Stratification Conjectures Concerning CS Sets (1975)Doctoral advisorRobion Kirby

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.

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(F_n) 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(F_n). 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(F_n). 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

References

^ "Institute for Advanced Study Annual Report 1984" (PDF). Retrieved August 18, 2020.
^ Michael Handel at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
^ "Michigan State Spartan History" (PDF). September 21, 1978. Retrieved August 18, 2020.
^ "Michigan State Spartan History" (PDF). May 26, 1983. Retrieved August 18, 2020.
^ "Michael Handel at the Institute for Advanced Study". 9 December 2019. Retrieved August 14, 2020.
^ Mladen Bestvina, and Michael Handel, Train tracks and automorphisms of free groups. Annals of Mathematics (2), volume 135 (1992), number 1, pages 1–51
^ Mladen Bestvina, Mark Feighn, and Michael Handel. The Tits alternative for Out(F_n). I. Dynamics of exponentially-growing automorphisms. Annals of Mathematics (2), volume 151 (2000), number 2, pages 517–623
^ Mladen Bestvina, Mark Feighn, and Michael Handel. The Tits alternative for Out(F_n). II. A Kolchin type theorem. Annals of Mathematics (2), volume 161 (2005), number 1, pages 1–59
^ "Past Sloan Fellows". Retrieved August 14, 2020.
^ "Fellows of the American Mathematical Society". Retrieved August 14, 2020.
^ "Two GC Professors Named Fellows of the American Mathematical Society for 2014". Retrieved August 14, 2020.