intersections of curves. Furthermore, the Hamiltonian vector fields of these trace functions define flows generalizing the Fenchel–Nielsen flows on Teichmüller space. This symplectic structure is invariant under the natural action of the mapping class group, and using the relationship between Dehn twists and the generalized Fenchel–Nielsen flows, he proved the ergodicity of the action of the mapping class group on the SU(2)-character variety with respect to symplectic Lebesgue measure. Following suggestions of Pierre Deligne, he and John Millson proved that the variety of representations of the fundamental group of a compact Kähler manifold has singularities defined by systems of homogeneous quadratic equations. This leads to various local rigidity results for actions on Hermitian symmetric spaces. With John Parker, he examined the complex hyperbolic ideal triangle group representations. These are representations of hyperbolic ideal triangle groups to the group of holomorphic isometries of the complex hyperbolic plane such that each standard generator of the triangle group maps to a complex reflection and the products of pairs of generators to parabolics. The space of representations for a given triangle group (modulo conjugacy) is parametrized by a half-open interval. They showed that the representations in a particular range were discrete and conjectured that a representation would be discrete if and only if it was in a specified larger range. This has become known as the Goldman–Parker conjecture and was eventually proven by Richard Schwartz. Professional service Goldman also heads a research group at the University of Maryland called the Experimental Geometry Lab, a team developing software (primarily in Mathematica) to explore geometric structures and dynamics in low dimensions. He served on the Board of Governors for The Geometry Center at the University of Minnesota from 1994 to 1996. He served as Editor-In-Chief of Geometriae Dedicata from 2003 until 2013. Awards and honors In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. Publications References External links Faculty page at the University of Maryland, College Park 1955 births Living people 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni University of Maryland, College Park faculty Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Topologists Differential geometers People from Kansas City, Missouri Mathematicians from Missouri Princeton University alumni