Joshua William Pfeffer
New York
Joshua William Pfeffer, 17, of Plainview, submitted an Intel Science Talent
Search project in mathematics about super Kãhler-Ricci flow. Josh works in
differential geometry. The Ricci flow on a manifold is a tool which smooths out
irregularities while retaining basic features of the manifold; Perleman used
Ricci flows in his solution of a famous open problem in geometry, the Poincare
Conjecture. In the context of mathematical physics, especially string theory,
notions of supersymmetry and supermanifolds arise, and in analogy with the
ordinary manifold case, Josh defines a super Kãhler-Ricci flow equation for
supermanifolds. He connects the behavior of the super Kãhler-Ricci flow with the
Ricci flow in interesting cases, and also gives conditions guaranteeing
stability of solutions of his new concept. Josh earned perfect SATs and attends
North Shore Hebrew Academy High School in Great Neck, where he heads both the
math and debate teams and is the newspaper editor-in-chief. One of his previous
science projects concerned fractal analysis of abnormal structures in the brain.
He plans to attend Harvard or MIT. Josh enjoys tennis and classical guitar, and
his parents are Daniel and Mindy Pfeffer.
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