Colin P. Rourke

In 2002, Martin Dunwoody posted a claimed proof of the Poincaré Conjecture. Rourke identified its fatal flaw.

In 2000 Rourke started taking an interest in cosmology and published his first substantial foray on the arXiv preprint server in 2003. For the past ten years he has collaborated with Robert MacKay, also of Warwick University, with papers on redshift, gamma-ray bursts and natural observer fields. He is currently working on a completely new paradigm for the universe, one that involves neither dark matter nor a Big Bang. This new paradigm is presented in "A new paradigm for the universe" (see bibliography).

In 1996, dissatisfied with the rapidly rising fees charged by the major publishers of mathematical research journals, Rourke decided to start his own journal, and was ably assisted by Robion Kirby, John Jones and Brian Sanderson. That journal became Geometry & Topology. Under Rourke's leadership, GT has become a leading journal in its field while remaining one of the least expensive per page. GT was joined in 1998 by a proceedings and monographs series, Geometry & Topology Monographs, and in 2000 by a sister journal, Algebraic & Geometric Topology. Rourke wrote the software and fully managed these publications until around 2005 when he cofounded Mathematical Sciences Publishers (with Rob Kirby) to take over the running). Mathematical Sciences Publishers has now grown to become a formidable force in academic publishing.

In September 1986 Rourke and his graduate student, Eduardo Rêgo (later at University of Oporto), claimed to have solved the Poincaré Conjecture. Reaction by the topological community at the time was highly skeptical, and during a special seminar at University of California, Berkeley given by Rourke, a fatal error was found in the proof.

From 1976-1981 Rourke was acting professor of pure mathematics at the Open University (on secondment from Warwick) where he masterminded the rewriting of the pure mathematics course.

Rourke was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1970 at Nice.

Rourke obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge in 1965 under the direction of Christopher Zeeman.

Colin Rourke (born 1 January 1943) is a British mathematician who worked in PL topology, low-dimensional topology, differential topology, group theory, relativity and cosmology. He is an emeritus professor at the Mathematics Institute of the University of Warwick and a founding editor of the journals Geometry & Topology and Algebraic & Geometric Topology, published by Mathematical Sciences Publishers, where he is the vice chair of its board of directors.