Professor Raymond Lickorish

Professor Lickorish came to Pembroke as an undergraduate in 1957, becoming a Fellow in 1964. He was Director or Assistant Director of Studies in Mathematics for 27 years. Eventually he became Professor of Geometric Topology in the University's Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics, becoming Head of Department (1997-2002). His research was in topology, particularly in knot theory. He worked on simplicial complexes and manifolds of all dimensions. He proved the Lickorish-Wallace Theorem which states that all closed orientable 3-manifolds can be obtained by Dehn surgery on a link. He was also one of the discoverers of the HOMFLY Polynomial, an invariant of classical knots and links. He was awarded the 1988 Allendorfer prize by the Mathematical Association of America and the 1991 Senior Whitehead Prize by the London Mathematical Society. He and Kenneth Millett won the 1991 Chauvenet Prize for their paper "The New Polynomial Invariants of Knots and Links". 
Lickorish was included in the 2019 class of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society "for contributions to knot theory and low-dimensional topology".