23 Regents Professor William Jaco’s career involves understanding the behavior of 3-D objects. He has his own Wikipedia page, which says Jaco works on threemanifolds and is a co-discoverer of the JSJ Decomposition named for its discoverers Jaco, Peter Shalen and German mathematician Klaus Johannsen. Jaco has completed more than 60 reviewed research papers and books, and nearly 250 plenary addresses worldwide. Jaco was executive director and CEO of the American Mathematical Society. His honors include fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, honorary lifetime member of the American Mathematical Society, honorary associate member of the Moscow Mathematical Society and a Recognition for Service to St. Petersburg and Russian Mathematics and Mathematicians. From 1982 to 1987, Jaco served as head of the mathematics department. He is currently the department’s interim chair. He earned a bachelor’s at Fairmont State University in West Virginia, a master’s at Pennsylvania State University and a doctorate at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Phil Shockley PORTRAIT “I work in three-manifold topology recognizing and classifying 3-D models. Applications include understanding knotting of DNA strands, robotics, surgical reconstruction, special effects and computer simulation, and mining networks.” William Jaco GRAYCE B. KERR CHAIR IN MATHEMATICS
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