Marc Lackenby

Lackenby studied mathematics at the University of Cambridge beginning in 1990, and earned his Ph.D. in 1997, with a dissertation on Dehn Surgery and Unknotting Operations supervised by W. B. R.

[2] Lackenby's research contributions include a proof of a strengthened version of the 2π theorem on sufficient conditions for Dehn surgery to produce a hyperbolic manifold,[L00] a bound on the hyperbolic volume of a knot complement of an alternating knot,[L04] and a proof that every diagram of the unknot can be transformed into a diagram without crossings by only a polynomial number of Reidemeister moves.

[L15] In February 2021 he announced a new unknot recognition algorithm that runs in quasi-polynomial time.

[3] Lackenby won the Whitehead Prize of the London Mathematical Society in 2003.

[4] In 2006, he won the Philip Leverhulme Prize in mathematics and statistics.