Nikolai Valeryevich Durov (russian: Никола́й Вале́рьевич Ду́ров; born 21 November 1980) is a

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

programmer and

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 ...

. He is the elder brother of

Pavel Durov Pavel Valeryevich Durov (russian: Павел Валерьевич Дуров; born 10 October 1984) is a Russian-born French-Emirati entrepreneur who is known for being the founder of the social networking site VK and Telegram Messenger. He is ...

, with whom he founded the social networking site VK and later

Telegram Messenger In many English-speaking countries, a telegram messenger, more often known as a telegram delivery boy, telegraph boy or telegram boy was a young man employed to deliver telegrams, usually on bicycle. In the United Kingdom, they were employed by th ...

Early life and education

Nikolai is the son of Valery Durov, a Doctor of Philological Sciences and a professor of philology during Nikolai's time at Saint Petersburg State University. As a youth, he reportedly could read at an adult level by age three and solve

cubic equations In algebra, a cubic equation in one variable is an equation of the form :ax^3+bx^2+cx+d=0 in which is nonzero. The solutions of this equation are called roots of the cubic function defined by the left-hand side of the equation. If all of th ...

by age eight. Competing as "Nikolai Dourov," he won gold at the

International Mathematical Olympiad The International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) is a mathematical olympiad for pre-university students, and is the oldest of the International Science Olympiads. The first IMO was held in Romania in 1959. It has since been held annually, except i ...

in the three years he participated of 1996, 1997, and 1998. Furthermore, participating in each yearly contest from 1995 through 1998, he accrued three silver medals and one gold medal in the

International Olympiad in Informatics The International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) is an annual competitive programming and one of the International Science Olympiads for secondary school students. It is the second largest science olympiad, after International Mathematical Olympi ...

. He also was a member of the Saint Petersburg State University ACM team, which won the

ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest The ICPC International Collegiate Programming Contest, known as the ICPC, is an annual multi-tiered competitive programming competition among the universities of the world. Directed by ICPC Executive Director and Baylor Professor Dr. William B. ...

in 2000 and 2001. He received his first PhD from Saint Petersburg State University in 2005 with his thesis "New Approach to Arakelov Geometry". Continuing at the

University of Bonn The Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (german: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) is a public research university located in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the ( en, Rhine ...

, he obtained in 2007 a second PhD under the supervision of

Gerd Faltings Gerd Faltings (; born 28 July 1954) is a German mathematician known for his work in arithmetic geometry. Education From 1972 to 1978, Faltings studied mathematics and physics at the University of Münster. In 1978 he received his PhD in mathema ...

with his thesis on singular Arakelov geometry.

Career

Research

Durov introduced commutative algebraic monads as a generalization of local objects in a generalized algebraic geometry. Versions of a

tropical geometry In mathematics, tropical geometry is the study of polynomials and their geometric properties when addition is replaced with minimization and multiplication is replaced with ordinary addition: : x \oplus y = \min\, : x \otimes y = x + y. So f ...

, of an

absolute geometry Absolute geometry is a geometry based on an axiom system for Euclidean geometry without the parallel postulate or any of its alternatives. Traditionally, this has meant using only the first four of Euclid's postulates, but since these are not suf ...

over a

field with one element In mathematics, the field with one element is a suggestive name for an object that should behave similarly to a finite field with a single element, if such a field could exist. This object is denoted F1, or, in a French–English pun, Fun. The name ...

and an algebraic analogue of Arakelov geometry were realized in this setup. He holds the position of senior research fellow at the Laboratory of Algebra and Number Theory at the St Petersburg Department of Steklov Institute of Mathematics of Russian Academy of Sciences.

Other work

* Durov worked as a

lead developer In software development, a lead programmer is responsible for providing technical guidance and mentorship to a team of software developers. Alternative titles include ''development lead'', ''technical lead'', ''lead programmer'', or ''lead applicat ...

of the VK team until 2013. * Together with his brother

Pavel Pavel ( Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian and Macedonian: Павел, Czech, Slovene, Romanian: Pavel, Polish: Paweł, Ukrainian: Павло, Pavlo) is a male given name. It is a Slavic cognate of the name Paul (derived from the Greek Pavlos). P ...

, he founded the instant messenger service

Telegram Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas ...

and developed the MTProto protocol for Telegram in 2013. * Durov is believed to be the author of the original TON ( Telegram Open Network) whitepaper.original TON (Telegram Open Network) whitepaper

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Durov, Nikolai 1980 births Living people Russian computer scientists Mathematicians from Saint Petersburg International Mathematical Olympiad participants Saint Petersburg State University alumni University of Bonn alumni Competitive programmers Telegram (software)