Maxim Kontsevich
Maxim Lvovich Kontsevich (Russian: Макси́м Льво́вич Конце́вич;
[mɐˈksʲim lʲˈvovʲit͡ɕ konˈt͡sɛvʲit͡ɕ] ; born 25 August 1964) is a Russian and Frenchmathematician. He holds both Russian and French citizenship. He is a professor at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques and a distinguished professor at the University of Miami. He received the Henri Poincaré Prize in 1997, the Fields Medal in 1998, the Crafoord Prize in 2008, the Shaw Prize and Fundamental Physics Prize in 2012, and the Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics in 2014.
Biography
He was born into the family of Lev Rafailovich Kontsevich, Soviet orientalist and author of the Kontsevich system. After ranking second in the All-Union Mathematics Olympiads, he attended Moscow State University but left without a degree in 1985 to become a researcher at the Institute for Problems of Information Transmission in Moscow. In 1992 he received his Ph.D. at the University of Bonn under Don Bernard Zagier. His thesis outlines a proof of a conjecture by Edward Witten that two quantum gravitational models are equivalent.
