| Alan William Reid | |
| Nationality: | Scottish American |
| Fields: | Mathematics |
| Workplaces: | Rice University University of Texas, Austin |
| Alma Mater: | University of Aberdeen |
| Thesis Title: | Arithmetic Kleinian Groups and their Fuchsian Subgroups |
| Thesis Year: | 1988 |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Colin Maclachlan |
Alan William Reid (born June 14, 1962) is a Scottish-American mathematician working primarily with arithmetic hyperbolic 3-manifolds. He is the Edgar Odell Lovett Chair of mathematics at Rice University, 2017—present.[1]
Reid grew up in Buckie, Scotland.[2] He obtained his doctorate from the University of Aberdeen,[3] supervised by Colin Maclachlan,[4] on the topic of Arithmetic Kleinian Groups and their Fuchsian Subgroups. He was a Royal Society University Research Fellow at Cambridge 1992-96. He was awarded the Sloan Research Fellowship in 1997,[5] and became one of the (inaugural) Fellows of the American Mathematical Society in 2013.[6]
Alan Reid's research primarily focusses on low-dimensional topology, hyperbolic manifolds and profinite groups. He proved that the figure-eight knot is the only knot whose complement is an arithmetic hyperbolic 3-manifold.[7] With Martin Bridson, Ben McReynolds and Ryan Spitler, he found the first examples of non-elementary Kleinian groups which are determined by their finite quotients among finitely generated residually finite groups.[8]
He has published more than 100 papers,[9] and supervised 21 PhD students to completion as of 2023.[10] [11]