William Minicozzi

Bio

William (Bill) Minicozzi is the Singer Professor of Mathematics, as of July 2017, and Associate Head July 2018. He joined the MIT faculty as Professor of Mathematics in 2012. Following the PhD from Stanford in 1994 (under Richard Schoen), he joined the mathematics faculty at Johns Hopkins as assistant professor, full professor by 2000. In 2002 he was appointed the J. J. Sylvester Professor at Johns Hopkins, and in 2007 the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor.

Minicozzi is a geometric analyst, who with colleague Tobias Colding have resolved a number of major results in the field: among them, proof of a longstanding S.T. Yau conjecture on the function theory on Riemannian manifolds, a finite-time extinction condition of the Ricci flow, and recent work on the mean curvature flow. In a series of major papers in Annals, Minicozzi and Colding effectively transformed the study of embedded minimal surfaces of 3 manifolds, producing a structure theory that has generated a new research program. For this work, they received the AMS Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry in 2010.

Minicozzi gave an invited address at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in 2006, and at the AMS Eastern sectional meeting in 2010. At Johns Hopkins he was twice awarded the Professor of the Year distinction for his teaching in the mathematics department, 2004 & 2006. He was elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2015. In 2018, the MIT School of Science selected Minicozzi for the Teaching Award for Undergraduate Education. He was also selected for the Outstanding Veteran First-Year Advisor Award by the MIT Office of the Vice Chancellor.

18.994 Course Website (Fall 2015)
18.02 Course Website (Fall 2016)
18.965 Course Website (Fall 2017)
18.02 Course Website (Fall 2018)
18.965 Course Website (Fall 2021)
18.100B Course Website (Spring 2022)
18.965 Course Website (Fall 2022)
18.02A Course Website (Fall 2023)

In search of stable geometric structures
Tobias Holck Colding and William P. Minicozzi II
Notices of the AMS, December 2019

Level Set Method: For Motion by Mean Curvature
Tobias Holck Colding and William P. Minicozzi II
Notices of the AMS, November 2016

Shapes of embedded minimal surfaces
Tobias Holck Colding and William P. Minicozzi II
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2006

Disks that are double spiral staircases
Tobias Holck Colding and William P. Minicozzi II
Notices of the AMS, March 2003