Professor Meng joined HKUST in Fall 1993. He is a CUSPEA
(China-US Physics Examination and Application) student in class 1986 (from University
of Science and Technology of China ) and in 1989 he switched to mathematics.
His Ph.D. field of research is topology and the thesis advisor is Thomas Goodwillie.
Mathematically he is best known as the "Meng" in Meng-Taubes Formula --- a fundamental result in three- and four-dimensional topology which links the modern Seiberg-Witten theory for smooth four-manifolds to the classical Alexander theory for knots, links and three-manifolds. That formula roughly says that each coefficient of the multi-variable Alexander polynomial of a knot, or a link or a three-manifold is exactly the number of solutions (counted with signs) of the static Seiberg-Witten equations for a certain topological setup.
In recent years his mathematical exploration is focused on the Kepler problem. The goal of this exploration is to find out the mathematical essence of this great problem and to explore its potential implication to the fundamental physics.
Department of Mathematics, Hong Kong University of
Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong
Office: (852) 2358-7451, Fax: (852) 2358-1643, E-mail: mameng@ust.hk
Last modified:
4 September 2012