Thurston's senior thesis at New College

2012-08-22T22:00:37Z

I've been collecting some of the many unpublished manuscripts of Bill Thurston over the years. His recent passing inspired me to ask the following. I've seen a number of references (for instance, in his wikipedia biography here) to a senior thesis that he wrote when he was a student at New College in Florida which concerns intuitionist foundations for mathematics. Does anyone happen to have a copy of this that they could either post electronically or mail to me?

EDIT : This was originally a comment, but I thought I'd move it up here because it might be of wider interest. Thurston made an interesting blog comment about his early philosophical interests here. An excerpt : "BTW, I was very taken by Kleene’s book on Foundations of Mathematics when I was in college, and it motivated me to write a senior thesis on intuitionist topology. I thought I might become an intuitionist logician, but when I approached Tarski to advise me, he said that Berkeley wasn’t a good place for intuitionism, so I went into topology instead."

Answer by Benjamin Dickman for Thurston's senior thesis at New College

2012-09-14T05:32:30Z

I've emailed you a pdf copy of "A Constructive Foundation for Topology" by Bill Thurston (June 14, 1967; New College Senior Thesis; submitted to Roger Renne).

In consideration of the comments above, I'm hesitant to post the file in a publicly accessible location. Perhaps the mathoverflow community can figure out whether such a posting would be appropriate.

Thurston's senior thesis at New College - MathOverflow

Thurston's senior thesis at New College

Answer by Benjamin Dickman for Thurston's senior thesis at New College