by Dan Rutherford
1. Legendrian and transverse knots
The basic objects of study are as follows: A contact structure
on a 3-manifold is a maximally nonintegrable 2-plane field. A
Legendrian (resp. transverse) knot in a contact 3-manifold,
An important case is when

Two Legendrian knots
are Legendrian isotopic if they are smoothly isotopic through other
Legendrian knots. A similar notion of transverse isotopy exists
for transverse knots and either notion is equivalent to the knots being
related by an ambient contact isotopy. Note that any Legendrian knot has
a well-defined underlying topological type as an ordinary (smooth) knot in
The classification for Legendrian unknots was accomplished by Eliashberg and Fraser in [e11], [e31]. Around 2000, Legendrian torus knots and figure-eight knots were classified by Etnyre and Honda [e15], and subsequently complete classifications have been obtained for some additional families of topological knot types; see, e.g., [e39], [e37]. In general, the Legendrian isotopy problem remains difficult. For instance, a glance at the Legendrian Knot Atlas [e38] reveals many topological knot types with 9 or fewer crossings containing Legendrian knots that are conjectured to be distinct but have not been successfully distinguished with any known invariants.
2. The work of Fuchs and Tabachnikov
In the past decades there has been something of an explosion of work related to Legendrian knot theory. Indeed, in June 2020 MathSciNet returns 133 matches for articles containing “Legendrian” and “knot” or “link” in the title. The sixth of these to appear chronologically, and one of the most highly cited, is the article “Invariants of Legendrian and transverse knots in the standard contact space”, by D. Fuchs and S. Tabachnikov.
2.1. Stable classification

A fundamental result from
[1]
addresses a stable version of the Legendrian isotopy problem. For a
Legendrian knot, arise from adding
zig-zags to the front projection of
Thus, the stable Legendrian isotopy problem reduces to the isotopy problem for topological knots!1 The idea of the proof is to convert the sequence of topological knot diagrams that appear during a generic topological isotopy into front projections of Legendrian knots by adding cusps at vertical tangencies and near crossings where the over strand has larger slope. The successive topological diagrams that appear are related by Reidemeister moves and other modifications involving vertical tangencies, and it is shown that for any such bifurcation the corresponding front projections will be related by Legendrian isotopy after adding enough zig-zags.
In Theorem 2.1, it is important that stabilizations of both
signs are allowed. Indeed, in the article by
Epstein,
Fuchs and
Meyer
[2]
a modification of the argument from
[1]
is used to show that two Legendrian knots become equivalent after
positive (resp. negative) stabilizations if and only if their positive
(resp. negative) transverse push-offs,
obtained by shifting a small amount in the positive (resp. negative) normal
direction within the contact planes,
are isotopic as transverse knots.
As a result, the isotopy problem for transverse knots is reduced to the
2.2. Bennequin-type inequalities and knot polynomials
In dimension 3, there is an opportunity for interaction between Legendrian knot theory and topological knot theory. In this direction, Fuchs and Tabachnikov observed in [1] an interesting relation between the classical invariants of a Legendrian knot and the famous HOMFLY-PT and Kauffman knot polynomials2 discovered in the 1980s. Before stating their result, let us review the context.
There are two classical integer-valued invariants of a Legendrian knot
By applying stabilizations, it is easy to make

Fuchs and Tabachnikov found that inequalities of a similar flavor to
Bennequin’s arise from the HOMFLY-PT and Kauffman knot polynomials,
In [1], the HOMFLY-PT inequality is observed as an immediate consequence of the combination of the works of Bennequin and Morton, Franks and Williams [e2], [e3], and the Kauffman estimate is then deduced using a nice trick involving Rudolph’s relation [e5] between the Kauffman polynomial of a knot and the HOMFLY-PT polynomial of its double with opposite orientations.3 As such, the authors of [1] elected to locate these inequalities in the background section, possibly leading to some later confusion in the literature about the origin of these inequalities.
For the left-handed trefoil,
2.3. Legendrian simplicity and finite-type invariants
To complement
the Legendrian geography problem, it is natural to ask to what extent the
classical invariants determine Legendrian (or transverse) knot types.5
In this direction,
call a topological knot type Legendrian (or transversally) simple
if any two Legendrian (or transverse) knots within the knot type that
have equal classical invariants are Legendrian (or
transverse) isotopic.
At the time
[1]
was written, it was not known whether any knot types in

At the time, the central difficulty in finding examples of non-Legendrian
simple knot types was that no Legendrian invariants beyond
This theorem was later extended to Legendrian knots in a much wider class
of contact manifolds, including all tight contact structures, in the work of
V. Tchernov
[e18].
Interestingly, Tchernov also finds examples of knots in overtwisted contact
structures on
3. New invariants and normal rulings
In the late 1990s a major development occurred in Legendrian knot theory
with the discovery8
of the Chekanov–Eliashberg algebra, a new invariant capable of distinguishing
between Legendrian knots with the same classical invariants. This invariant
is a differential graded algebra
(abbreviated DGA) arising from
3.1. Augmentations and normal rulings
Fuchs was an early proponent of the Chekanov–Eliashberg DGA, as he explored
and applied this invariant in a sequence of articles several of which were
coauthored with grad students at UC Davis.
The Chekanov–Eliashberg DGA is somewhat
unwieldy to work with in its entirety
as the graded pieces of

In investigating this question, Fuchs discovered in
[4]
a beautiful combinatorial structure arising in the front projections of
Legendrian knots called a normal ruling. For a Legendrian link
The forward direction was established in
[4],
while the reverse implication was proven independently by
Fuchs and
Ishkhanov
[5]
and
Sabloff
[e21].
For the proof, in
[4]
Fuchs introduced an elegant method of adding “splashes” via a Legendrian
isotopy in order to greatly simplify the differential at the expense of
adding many additional generators to

Interestingly, the notion of normal ruling was discovered independently by
Chekanov and Pushkar in a somewhat different context.13
In
[e20]
they introduced normal rulings, under the name of positive proper
decompositions, in the context of generating families for Legendrian knots,
and applied properties of the behavior of normal rulings under generic
Legendrian isotopies in their solution of the Arnold 4-conjectures.14
A generating family (of functions) for a Legendrian knot
In
[6],
Fuchs and I established such a connection by constructing an augmentation from
a generating family and providing an isomorphism between the corresponding
linearized homology and generating family homology groups. Under this
isomorphism, Sabloff’s duality result
[e28]
for the linearized homology groups of the Chekanov–Eliashberg algebra
appears on the generating family side as the Alexander duality. The idea for
constructing an augmentation,
3.2. Fuchs’ “irresponsible conjecture”
In the article [4] where he introduced normal rulings, Fuchs made an elegant conjecture connecting the new Legendrian invariants with topological knot theory.
The conjecture was based on a study of mirror torus knots in
[3]
and evidence from knots with small crossing number. Despite being dubbed
“irresponsible” in
[4],
the conjecture turned out to be completely accurate and was proven in
[e25]
as a consequence of a more precise relationship between normal rulings and
the Kauffman polynomial. In
[e20],
Chekanov and Pushkar had obtained Legendrian invariants by making a refined
count of normal rulings: they showed that for any
To see that Fuchs’ conjecture follows as a corollary, observe that the
inequality (1) is sharp if and only if the coefficient of
The connection between normal rulings, augmentations of the
Chekanov–Eliashberg algebra, and the topological knot polynomials
has been strengthened in several subsequent works. Building on the
many-to-one correspondence between augmentations and normal rulings over
4. Working with Fuchs at UC Davis
Having Dmitry Fuchs as an advisor at UC Davis was a privilege and a pleasure. I came into contact with Dmitry, whom I always referred to as Dr. Fuchs while I was a student, as soon as classes started upon my arrival at UC Davis in 2003 as he taught the first two thirds of the year-long algebra sequence for new Ph.D. students. The topics covered by Fuchs in the course were linear algebra, rings and modules, category theory, and Galois theory. Homological algebra was covered in the final third of the course sequence, taught that year by Dmitry’s own advisor, Albert Schwarz. I particularly enjoyed the exercises Fuchs had assembled for the class, from which students were allowed to choose from an ample selection of problems which pulled in many additional topics, especially in the category theory part of the class.
As the first year wrapped up, in order to receive summer support from UC Davis’ VIGRE grant I needed to work on a research project. But, I had no research program. What to do? With another student, Chris Berg, we decided to talk to Fuchs who agreed to supervise a summer project, and helped us to quickly write a proposal. Although the proposal had involved characteristic classes of families of foliations, leading me to scramble to assemble some background in differentiable manifolds which I did not have at the time, during the summer Dmitry shared his conjecture about normal rulings and the Kauffman polynomial. Following Dmitry’s suggestions, we established the sharpness of the estimate (1) for several families of Legendrian knots constructed so that their front diagrams would have obvious normal rulings.
After the summer, Chris turned his interests toward combinatorial representation theory and began working with M. Vazirani, going on to do excellent work in this area. I continued to work with Dr. Fuchs, and as I attended his year-long algebraic topology course,15 we started weekly meetings that would continue off and on for the rest of my time at UC Davis. During these meetings, which often took place at Dmitry’s home office and could last for 2 to 3 hours, Dmitry was extremely generous with his time and knowledge. As a result, I was exposed to a variety of Dmitry’s (many) favorite topics including Lie algebra cohomology and foliations, evolutes and involutes of plane curves, contact and symplectic topology, representations of the Virasoro algebra, singular vectors in Verma modules of affine Lie algebras, etc. Dmitry has a particular affinity for (and encyclopedic knowledge of!) classical algebraic topology, and a question about K-theory or spectral sequences could lead to a two-hour improvised overview of the topic.
I was still somewhat hooked on the problem about normal rulings and the Kauffman polynomial and from time to time would come back to it and expand the class of examples for which I could prove Fuchs’ conjecture. A particular exciting day of mathematics for me resulted after reading about Chekanov and Pushkar’s ruling invariant in the paper [e26] of Ng and Sabloff, formulated there as a multiset of integers, i.e., a finite sequence of nonnegative integers. On the bike ride home I started thinking about the top degree of the Kauffman polynomial, the part that needs to be nonzero in order for the estimate to be sharp. It’s also a sequence of integers (but nonnegative?). What if it was the same sequence? I had a pretty good idea in my head of what the Kauffman polynomial of the trefoil looked like, and that seemed to check out. Once I got home, I checked the figure-eight knot. As it can be a little tricky to identify all of the normal rulings of a front projection by hand, I sat down and wrote a C++ program to compute the ruling invariant and then started comparing the results with the tables of the Kauffman polynomial one knot at a time. Except for some signs in the coefficients of the Kauffman polynomial, each and every knot worked out exactly!!!16 I was excited to tell Dr. Fuchs the news. At the start of our next meeting I let him know that I had made an interesting discovery. Dmitry’s response, with a bit of twinkle in his eye, was “I like interesting discoveries…” He handed me the pen. After understanding my refinement of his conjecture and checking it for a few knots, Dmitry was visibly excited. He immediately adjourned the meeting saying that he had some other topics that he had planned to discuss with me but now it did not seem so important. I left his house under orders to begin writing a paper with the special cases that I was able to prove. On the way home I can remember pausing on a hill in a park and feeling satisfied and excited in the perfect Davis summer weather.
With the more specific statement in hand, the conjecture was not hard to prove. Viewing the ruling invariant as a knot polynomial, I soon realized a version of its skein relation using a local picture with two cusps. But, it seemed too specific to be applicable to arbitrary Legendrian knots. Later in my office I saw that a more general skein relation held and checked through the case-by-case inductive argument that showed that the skein relation, also satisfied by the top term of the Kauffman polynomial, would uniquely characterize a Legendrian invariant. I sent Dmitry a quick e-mail letting him know that his conjecture could now be considered a theorem. It was exciting to know that the result was true!
By generously sharing his conjecture and other problems with me, Dmitry gave me the chance to enter the mathematical research community, but his support did not end there. After finishing my Ph.D. at UC Davis, Dmitry helped me to obtain valuable post-doc positions at Duke University where I worked with Lenny Ng and later at University of Arkansas where I worked with Yo’av Rieck. Moreover, he helped me to make important connections with other researchers interested in Legendrian knots and related topics by, not long after I completed my Ph.D., organizing with S. Tabachnikov and L. Traynor a workshop at AIM. This workshop also resulted in an offshoot SQuaREs group that stimulated my collaboration with Brad Henry. Dmitry also encouraged me to travel internationally, and in particular to spend a productive and enjoyable month at MPIM in Bonn.
Thank you, Dmitry! I am truly grateful to you for sharing your knowledge and joy in doing mathematics and for all of your help along the way!
The author is an Associate Professor at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. He enjoys spending time with family and grooving to the sounds of classic jazz from the 1950s and 60s.