Minor note: Thurston's 'geometrization conjecture', which Thurston talks about near the end of the essay, has since been proven by Grigori Perelman. This article was apparently written before then. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometrization_conjecture" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometrization_conjecture</a><p>edit: article was published April 1994, Perelman's first paper appeared on the arxiv in November 2002