David Gabai

Topologist who contributed to understanding of low dimensional manifolds, especially dimension 3. His discoveries about taut foliations and essential laminations in 3-manifold, and his proof of the famous Property R Conjecture, made him a leader in this precise area. Subsequent discoveries, with collaborators, include work on Seifert fiber spaces, on the Smale Conjecture for hyperbolic 3-manifolds, on the Marden Tameness Conjecture, and the identification of the Week manifold as the closed hyperbolic 3-manifold of minimum volume. Member of the National Academy of Sciences, winner of the Clay Research Prize, fellow of the American Mathematical Society, and winner of the society's Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry.