David Kazhdan ( he, דוד קשדן), born Dmitry Aleksandrovich Kazhdan (russian: Дми́трий Александро́вич Кажда́н), is a

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

and

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

known for work in

representation theory Representation theory is a branch of mathematics that studies abstract algebraic structures by ''representing'' their elements as linear transformations of vector spaces, and studies modules over these abstract algebraic structures. In essen ...

. Kazhdan is a 1990 MacArthur Fellow.

Biography

Kazhdan was born on 20 June 1946 in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nati ...

. His father is

Alexander Kazhdan Alexander Petrovich Kazhdan (russian: Алекса́ндр Петро́вич Кажда́н; 3 September 1922 – 29 May 1997) was a Soviet-American Byzantinist. Among his publications was the three-volume ''Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium'', a com ...

. He earned a doctorate under Alexandre Kirillov in 1969 and was a member of

Israel Gelfand Israel Moiseevich Gelfand, also written Israïl Moyseyovich Gel'fand, or Izrail M. Gelfand ( yi, ישראל געלפֿאַנד, russian: Изра́иль Моисе́евич Гельфа́нд, uk, Ізраїль Мойсейович Гел� ...

's school of mathematics. He is

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""T ...

ish, and emigrated from the Soviet Union to take a position at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

in 1975. He changed his name from Dmitri Aleksandrovich to David and became an

Orthodox Jew Orthodox Judaism is the collective term for the traditionalist and theologically conservative branches of contemporary Judaism. Theologically, it is chiefly defined by regarding the Torah, both Written and Oral, as revealed by God to Moses on ...

around that time. In 2002, he immigrated to Israel and is now a professor at the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; he, הַאוּנִיבֶרְסִיטָה הַעִבְרִית בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם) is a public research university based in Jerusalem, Israel. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Dr. Chaim Weiz ...

as well as a

professor emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

at Harvard. On October 6, 2013, Kazhdan was critically injured in a car accident while riding a bicycle in Jerusalem. Kazhdan has four children. His son, Eli Kazhdan, was general director of

Natan Sharansky Natan Sharansky ( he, נתן שרנסקי; russian: Ната́н Щара́нский; uk, Натан Щаранський, born Anatoly Borisovich Shcharansky on 20 January 1948); uk, Анатолій Борисович Щаранський, ...

Yisrael BaAliyah Yisrael BaAliyah ( he, ישראל בעלייה, ; lit., ''Israel on the up'') was a political party in Israel between its formation in 1996 and its merger into Likud in 2003. It was formed to represent the interests of Russian immigrants by forme ...

political party (now merged with

Likud Likud ( he, הַלִּיכּוּד, HaLikud, The Consolidation), officially known as Likud – National Liberal Movement, is a major centre-right to right-wing political party in Israel. It was founded in 1973 by Menachem Begin and Ariel S ...

Research

He is known for collaboration with

Victor Kac Victor Gershevich (Grigorievich) Kac (russian: link=no, Виктор Гершевич (Григорьевич) Кац; born 19 December 1943) is a Soviet and American mathematician at MIT, known for his work in representation theory. He co-disc ...

George Lusztig George Lusztig (born ''Gheorghe Lusztig''; May 20, 1946) is an American-Romanian mathematician and Abdun Nur Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was a Norbert Wiener Professor in the Department of Mathematics from ...

(on the Kazhdan–Lusztig conjecture on Verma modules), with

Grigory Margulis Grigory Aleksandrovich Margulis (russian: Григо́рий Алекса́ндрович Маргу́лис, first name often given as Gregory, Grigori or Gregori; born February 24, 1946) is a Russian-American mathematician known for his work o ...

( Kazhdan–Margulis theorem), with Yuval Flicker and S. J. Patterson on the representations of

metaplectic group In mathematics, the metaplectic group Mp2''n'' is a double cover of the symplectic group Sp2''n''. It can be defined over either real or ''p''-adic numbers. The construction covers more generally the case of an arbitrary local or finite field ...

s. Kazhdan's property (T) is widely used in representation theory. Kazhdan held a

MacArthur Fellowship The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 indi ...

from 1990 to 1995. He was the doctoral advisor of

Vladimir Voevodsky Vladimir Alexandrovich Voevodsky (, russian: Влади́мир Алекса́ндрович Воево́дский; 4 June 1966 – 30 September 2017) was a Russian-American mathematician. His work in developing a homotopy theory for algebraic va ...

, a recipient of the

Fields Medal The Fields Medal is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years. The name of the award h ...

, one of the highest awards in mathematics. Kazhdan has been a member of

United States National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the N ...

since 1990, of the Israel Academy of Sciences since 2006, and of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

since 2008. In 2012, he was awarded the

Israel Prize The Israel Prize ( he, פרס ישראל; ''pras israél'') is an award bestowed by the State of Israel, and regarded as the state's highest cultural honor. History The Israel Prize is awarded annually, on Israeli Independence Day, in a state cer ...

, the country's highest academic honor, for mathematics and computer science. In 2020 he received the

Shaw Prize The Shaw Prize is an annual award presented by the Shaw Prize Foundation. Established in 2002 in Hong Kong, it honours "individuals who are currently active in their respective fields and who have recently achieved distinguished and signifi ...

in Mathematics.Shaw Prize 2020
/ref>

Selected publications

* Quantum fields and strings: a course for mathematicians. Vol. 1, 2. Material from the Special Year on Quantum Field Theory held at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, 1996–1997. Edited by

Pierre Deligne Pierre René, Viscount Deligne (; born 3 October 1944) is a Belgian mathematician. He is best known for work on the Weil conjectures, leading to a complete proof in 1973. He is the winner of the 2013 Abel Prize, 2008 Wolf Prize, 1988 Crafoord P ...

, Pavel Etingof, Daniel S. Freed, Lisa C. Jeffrey, David Kazhdan,

John W. Morgan John W. Morgan, (born May 7, 1964), is a Canadian lawyer, politician, and businessman. He was the mayor of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality (CRBM) in Nova Scotia from 2000 to 2012. Morgan is a graduate of the University College of Cape Bret ...

, David R. Morrison and

Edward Witten Edward Witten (born August 26, 1951) is an American mathematical and theoretical physicist. He is a Professor Emeritus in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Witten is a researcher in string theory, q ...

. American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI; Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), Princeton, NJ, 1999. Vol. 1: xxii+723 pp.; Vol. 2: pp. i--xxiv and 727–1501. , 81-06 (81T30 81Txx)

References

American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Class of 2008

External links

Official Hebrew University home page
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kazhdan, Dave Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Members of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities Israeli mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Russian mathematicians Soviet mathematicians Israeli Orthodox Jews Baalei teshuva Kazhdan, David MacArthur Fellows Living people Hebrew University of Jerusalem faculty Harvard University faculty Soviet emigrants to the United States 1946 births Israel Prize in computer sciences recipients