James W. Cannon (born January 30, 1943) is an American mathematician working in the areas of low-dimensional topology and geometric group theory. He was an Orson Pratt Professor of Mathematics at Brigham Young University.

Biographical data

James W. Cannon was born on January 30, 1943, in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania. Cannon received a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Utah in 1969, under the direction of C. Edmund Burgess.

He was a Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison from 1977 to 1985. In 1986 Cannon was appointed an Orson Pratt Professor of Mathematics at Brigham Young University. He held this position until his retirement in September 2012.

Cannon gave an AMS Invited address at the meeting of the American Mathematical Society in Seattle in August 1977, an ICM invited address at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Helsinki 1978, and delivered the 1982 Mathematical Association of America Hedrick Lectures in Toronto, Canada.

Cannon was elected to the American Mathematical Society Council in 2003 with the term of service February 1, 2004, to January 31, 2007. In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.