| Selman Akbulut | |
| Birth Date: | 1949 |
| Birth Place: | Balıkesir, Turkey |
| Nationality: | Turkish |
| Education: | University of California |
| Occupation: | Mathematician |
| Known For: | Akbulut cork |
Selman Akbulut (born 1949) is a Turkish mathematician, specializing in research in topology, and geometry. He was a professor at Michigan State University until February 2020.
In 1975, he earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley as a student of Robion Kirby. In topology, he has worked on handlebody theory, low-dimensional manifolds,[1] symplectic topology, G2 manifolds. In the topology of real-algebraic sets, he and Henry C. King proved that every compact piecewise-linear manifold is a real-algebraic set; they discovered new topological invariants of real-algebraic sets.[2]
He was a visiting scholar several times at the Institute for Advanced Study (in 1975-76, 1980–81, 2002, and 2005).[3]
On February 14, 2020, Akbulut was removed from his tenured position at MSU by the Board of Trustees, after disputes over his teaching allotments and communications with colleagues.[4] [5] [6]
He has developed 4-dimensional handlebody techniques, settling conjectures and solving problems about 4-manifolds, such as a conjecture of Christopher Zeeman,[7] the Harer - Kas - Kirby conjecture, a problem of Martin Scharlemann,[8] and problems of Sylvain Cappell and Julius Shaneson.[9] [10] [11] He constructed an exotic compact 4-manifold (with boundary) from which he discovered "Akbulut corks".[12] [13] [14] [15]
His most recent results concern the 4-dimensional smooth Poincaré conjecture.[16] He has supervised 14 Ph.D students as of 2019. He has more than 100 papers and three books published, and several books edited.