JOB TITLE: Professor Emeritus
We are very sad to announce the sudden passing of Sir Vaughan F. R. Jones on September 6, 2020 in Nashville, Tennessee. Vaughan was born in New Zealand on December 31, 1952. He earned his PhD at the University of Geneva in 1979, and he was a Professor of Mathematics at UC Berkeley from 1985 to 2011, before moving to Vanderbilt University. He worked in a wide range of areas of mathematics including von Neumann algebras and low dimensional topology, and he discovered what is now known as the Jones polynomial, which led to a revolution in knot theory and the beginnings of quantum topology. He was awarded a Fields Medal in 1990 at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Kyoto, and he famously wore a New Zealand All Blacks rugby jersey during his acceptance speech.
For more information please see this tribute written by his family https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/brentwood-tn/sir-vaughan-jones-9353933.
PRIMARY RESEARCH AREA: Mathematical Analysis
ADDITIONAL RESEARCH AREAS: Geometry/Topology
RESEARCH INTERESTS: Von Neumann algebras
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
- Jones, Vaughan (2009). On the origin and development of subfactors and quantum topology. Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.) 46 No.2, 309-326. [MR] [GS?]
- Jones, Vaughan F. R. (2007). In and around the origin of quantum groups. In Prospects in mathematical physics Contemp. Math. 437 101-126 Amer. Math. Soc. Providence, RI. [MR] [GS?]
- Grossman, Pinhas and Jones, Vaughan F. R. (2007). Intermediate subfactors with no extra structure. J. Amer. Math. Soc. 20 No.1, 219-265 (electronic). [MR] [GS?]
- Jones, Vaughan F. R. and Reznikoff, Sarah A. (2006). Hilbert space representations of the annular Temperley-Lieb algebra. Pacific J. Math. 228 No.2, 219-249. [MR] [GS?]
- Aharonov, Dorit and Jones, Vaughan and Landau, Zeph (2006). A polynomial quantum algorithm for approximating the Jones polynomial. In STOC'06: Proceedings of the 38th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing 427-436 ACM New York. [MR] [GS?]
