Geoffrey Mess, a professor in the UCLA Department of Mathematics who made important contributions to topology and geometric group theory, died Aug. 8 in Los Angeles after an extended illness. He was 54.
Mess joined the UCLA mathematics faculty in 1986 as a Hedrick Assistant Professor. Mess’ work laid the basis for the solution of the Seifert conjecture, and his joint work with Mladen Bestvina on torsion-free Gromov hyperbolic groups has produced what is now known as the Bestvina-Mess formula. His work on symmetries of Lorentz spacetimes of constant curvature resulted in a theorem that bears his name.
Born in Montreal, Canada, in 1960, Mess earned his undergraduate degree in pure mathematics and applied mathematics from the University of Waterloo, which he entered at age 16. Mess received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, in 1988. His thesis focused on the Torelli group, a subgroup of the mapping class group.
Mess was awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship in 1990 and promoted to an associate professor in 1992.
Mess battled illness for much of the past 20 years. Mess is survived by his brother, Derek Mess, a professor of chemical and biological engineering at Tufts University.
The UCLA Department of Mathematics has posted his.obituary here.
