Skip to main content
6 of 6
Correcting Andy's name.
Joseph O'Rourke
  • 150.9k
  • 36
  • 358
  • 958

Thurston's 24 questions: All settled?

Thurston's 1982 article on three-dimensional manifolds1 ends with $24$ "open questions":


[![WPT24][1]][1]
      $\cdots$
[![WPT24th][2]][2]

Two naive questions from an outsider: (1) Have all $24$ now been resolved? (2) If so, were they all resolved in his lifetime?


> 1Thurston, William P. "Three dimensional manifolds, Kleinian groups and hyperbolic geometry." *Bull. Amer. Math. Soc*, 6.3 (1982). Also: In *Proc. Sympos. Pure Math*, vol. 39, pp. 87-111. 1983. [Citseer PDF download link](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.535.7618&rep=rep1&type=pdf).

Answered by Ian Agol, Andy Putman, and Igor Rivin. Ian: "Problems 1-18 have been completely answered....Problems 19-24 are more open-ended," and difficult to declare "all settled" (as emphasized by YCor). But, as Andy says, "with the exception of problem 23." Back to Ian: "One can imagine, however, a complete and satisfactory answer eventually to question 23."

Joseph O'Rourke
  • 150.9k
  • 36
  • 358
  • 958