William W. Menasco is a topologist and a professor at the University at Buffalo.
He served as assistant professor at Rutgers University from 1981 to 1984.
[1] Menasco proved that a link with an alternating diagram, such as an alternating link, will be non-split if and only if the diagram is connected.
Menasco, along with Morwen Thistlethwaite proved the Tait flyping conjecture, which states that, given any two reduced alternating diagrams
by means of a sequence of certain simple moves called flypes.