Mathematical beauty at the limits of the possible

May 9, 2022 - Governor General's Gold Medal winner Patrick Naylor brings the awe and wonder of math to the next generation of students - By Jon Parsons Faculty of Mathematics - Researching in mathematics means engaging in unconventional thinking. For Patrick Naylor, a newly-minted PhD graduate from the Department of Pure Mathematics, the unconventional is the everyday. Naylor works in the field of low-dimensional topology, which in a nutshell means he explores the characteristics of dimensions beyond those we experience as reality. Naylor is this year's winner of the coveted Governor General's Gold Medal for the University of Waterloo at the doctoral level. The Governor General's Gold Medal is among the highest honours in academia, awarded annually to one doctoral candidate and one master's student with the highest standing. Naylor's recent dissertation on low-dimensional topology was received with much acclaim, winning him first place in the Faculty of Mathematics Doctoral Prize. Oddly enough, even though mathematicians have shown there to be perhaps as many as twelve dimensions in the knowable universe, the higher dimensions - those over the fifth dimension - are somewhat more straightforward to understand. "Various mathematicians took up the study of high-dimensional manifolds and drove the field forward through exciting discoveries," Naylor says.