Prof. Margalit quoted in New York Times
On September 6, 2026, the New York Times published an article about the mathematician Joan Birman and her collaborator, Vasudha Bharathram. The article centers around their relationship, which started when Joan (now 99) was 92 and Vasudha was 15. The article, “The 92-Year-Old Mathematician and the Teenage Apprentice,” can be found here:
Chair and Stevenson Professor Dan Margalit, is quoted in the article.
One of the main story lines is the recent breakthrough by the two of them with Tara Brendle, in which they resolve the longstanding open question about whether the Burau representation is faithful for the braid group on four strands. (It was known to be faithful when there are fewer than 4 strands and unfaithful when there are more than four strands.) Their theorem was announced in a talk by Brendle at the ICM satellite conference, Vanderbilt Colloquium Series: Groups, Geometry, and Dynamics, held in July at Vanderbilt.