Bernard Maskit

{{short description|American mathematician}}

{{infobox scientist

|name=Bernard Maskit

|nationality=American

|education=New York University (PhD)

|occupation=Mathematician

|known_for=Expertise in Kleinian groups

}}

Bernard (Bernie) Maskit (27 May 1935 – 15 March 2024) was an American mathematician who worked on Kleinian groups, low dimensional geometry and topology, and related topics.

Life and Work

Maskit studied for both his bachelors and doctoral degrees at New York University, earning his Ph.D. in 1964 under the supervision of Lipman Bers,{{mathgenealogy|id=11545}}with a thesis entitled On Klein's Combination Theorem. After postdoctoral studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, he held an assistant professorship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1965 to 1972.[https://math.mit.edu/about/history/faculty.php Past faculty], MIT Mathematics, retrieved 2015-01-22. He then moved to the mathematics department at Stony Brook University, where he retired in 2008[https://www.ias.edu/people/cos/users/5171 Member profile], Institute for Advanced Study, retrieved 2015-01-21. and was then a professor emeritus until his death.[http://www.math.sunysb.edu/~bernie/ Faculty web page], Stony Brook University, retrieved 2015-01-21. In 2012, he became one of the inaugural fellows of the American Mathematical Society.[https://www.ams.org/profession/fellows-list List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society], retrieved 2015-01-21.

Maskit’s main area of mathematical expertise was the study of Kleinian groups acting on low dimensional hyperbolic spaces, where he made fundamental contributions. His works include the [https://mathscinet.ams.org/mathscinet/article?mr=172252 planarity theorem],  the significant development of the Klein-Maskit combination theorems, the study of Schottky groups including [https://mathscinet.ams.org/mathscinet/article?mr=220929 their characterization], and the [https://mathscinet.ams.org/mathscinet/article?mr=297997 Poincare polyhedron theorem]. Of particular note is the Maskit slice of Teichmueller space. He is the author of the book Kleinian Groups (Grundlehren der Mathematischen Wissenschaften 287, Springer-Verlag, 1988){{citation|url=http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.bams/1183555627|title=Review: Bernard Maskit, Kleinian groups|journal=Bull. Amer. Math. Soc.|volume=22|issue=2|year=1990|pages=310–315|first=Albert|last=Marden|authorlink=Albert Marden|doi=10.1090/s0273-0979-1990-15895-1|doi-access=free}}Review of Kleinian groups by William Abikoff (1990), {{MR|0959135}} and gave an invited talk about Kleinian groups at the 1974 International Congress of Mathematicians.{{citation|contribution-url=http://www.mathunion.org/ICM/ICM1974.2/Main/icm1974.2.0213.0216.ocr.pdf|contribution=Classification of Kleinian Groups|first=Bernard|last=Maskit|title=Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians, Vancouver|year=1974|pages=213–216|mr=0437749}}.