Jessica Purcell
Jessica A. Shepherd Purcell is an American mathematician specializing in low-dimensional topology whose research topics have included hyperbolic Dehn surgery and the Jones polynomial. She is a professor of mathematics at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.[1]
Education
[edit]Purcell credits a high school mathematics teacher, Mr. Pehrson, for her interest in mathematics.[2] She majored in mathematics as an undergraduate at the University of Utah, with a minor in computer science. She was a co-winner of the 1998 Alice T. Schafer Prize for Excellence in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Woman of the Association for Women in Mathematics,[3][4] and graduated summa cum laude in 1998.[1]
After earning a master's degree in mathematics at the University of Michigan in 1999,[1] Purcell completed her Ph.D. at Stanford University in 2004. Her dissertation, Cusp Shapes of Hyperbolic Link Complements and Dehn Filling, was supervised by Steven Kerckhoff.[1][5]
Career
[edit]After postdoctoral research at the University of Texas at Austin and University of Oxford, Purcell became an assistant professor at Brigham Young University in 2007.[1] She was named a Sloan Research Fellow in 2011,[1][6] and earned tenure at Brigham Young in 2013. After visits to Monash University and at the Institute for Advanced Study as a Von Neumann Fellow, she moved to Monash as an associate professor in 2015, became an ARC Future Fellow in 2017, and was named full professor in 2019.[1]
She chaired the Women in Mathematics Special Interest Group of the Australian Mathematical Society for 2018–2019 and 2019–2020.[7]
Recognition
[edit]Purcell's work has earned international recognition for advancing understanding of geometric structures in three-dimensional spaces, including applications to theoretical physics and pure mathematics. She has received prestigious awards, such as the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in 2011[8], the National Science Foundation CAREER Award from 2013 to 2016, and the Von Neumann Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study in 2015[9]. Purcell was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in May 2025.[10] She was elected to the 2026 class of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society.[11]
Books
[edit]Purcell is the author of the book Hyperbolic Knot Theory (Graduate Studies in Mathematics 209, American Mathematical Society, 2020).[12] With David Futer and Efstratia Kalfagianni she is a coauthor of Guts of Surfaces and the Colored Jones Polynomial (Lecture Notes in Mathematics 2069, Springer, 2012).[13]
References
[edit]- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Curriculum vitae (PDF), Monash University, retrieved 2021-03-14
- ↑ Purcell, Jessica, Biography: Some frequently asked questions, Brigham Young University, archived from the original on 2023-01-03, retrieved 2021-03-14
- ↑ Alice T. Schafer Prize for Excellence in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Woman 1998, Association for Women in Mathematics, retrieved 2021-03-14
- ↑ Gallian, Joseph A. (June–July 2019), "The First Twenty-Five Winners of the AWM Alice T. Schafer Prize" (PDF), Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 66 (6): 870–874, doi:10.1090/noti1892
- ↑ Jessica Purcell at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- ↑ "Math Professor Jessica Purcell Wins Prestigious Fellowship", BYU News, Brigham Young University, 23 February 2011, archived from the original on 2016-07-09, retrieved 2021-03-14
- ↑ Past WIMSIG executive committees, Australian Mathematical Society, retrieved 2021-03-14
- ↑ "Jessica Purcell". BYU news. Retrieved 2025-02-11.
- ↑ "Jessica Purcell". Institute for Advanced Study. Retrieved 2025-02-11.
- ↑ "Jessica Purcell". Australian Academy of Science. Retrieved 2025-05-26.
- ↑ "2026 Class of Fellows of the AMS". American Mathematical Society. Retrieved 2025-11-08.
- ↑ Reviews of Hyperbolic Knot Theory: Henry Segerman, MAA Reviews Archived 2021-04-12 at the Wayback Machine; Luisa Paoluzzi, Zbl 1480.57002; Kazushi Ahara, MR 4249621
- ↑ Reviews of Guts of Surfaces and the Colored Jones Polynomial: Heather A. Dye, MR 3024600; Daniel Moskovich, Zbl 1270.57002
External links
[edit]- Home page
- Jessica Purcell publications indexed by Google Scholar
- Meet Professor Jessica Purcell, Monash University
| International | |
|---|---|
| Academics | |
| People | |
- Living people
- 21st-century American mathematicians
- 21st-century American women mathematicians
- 21st-century Australian mathematicians
- 21st-century Australian women mathematicians
- Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science
- University of Utah alumni
- University of Michigan alumni
- Stanford University alumni
- Academic staff of Monash University
- Sloan Research Fellows
- Fellows of the American Mathematical Society