Alexander Givental (russian: Александр Борисович Гивенталь) is a Russian-American

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 ...

working in

symplectic topology Symplectic geometry is a branch of differential geometry and differential topology that studies symplectic manifolds; that is, differentiable manifolds equipped with a closed, nondegenerate 2-form. Symplectic geometry has its origins in the Ha ...

and

singularity theory In mathematics, singularity theory studies spaces that are almost manifolds, but not quite. A string can serve as an example of a one-dimensional manifold, if one neglects its thickness. A singularity can be made by balling it up, dropping it ...

, as well as their relation to topological string theories. He graduated from Moscow Phys-Math school number 2 (later renamed into Lyceum ) and then the

Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas The Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas (russian: Российский государственный университет нефти и газа имени И. М. Губкина) is a public university in Moscow, Russia. The univer ...

, and he finally his Ph.D. under the supervision of V. I. Arnold in 1987. He emigrated to the

USA The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

1990 File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of humanity on Earth, astrophysicist ...

. He provided the first proof of the mirror conjecture for

Calabi–Yau manifold In algebraic geometry, a Calabi–Yau manifold, also known as a Calabi–Yau space, is a particular type of manifold which has properties, such as Ricci flatness, yielding applications in theoretical physics. Particularly in superstri ...

s that are complete intersections in toric ambient spaces, in particular for

quintic In algebra, a quintic function is a function of the form :g(x)=ax^5+bx^4+cx^3+dx^2+ex+f,\, where , , , , and are members of a field, typically the rational numbers, the real numbers or the complex numbers, and is nonzero. In other words, a ...

hypersurface In geometry, a hypersurface is a generalization of the concepts of hyperplane, plane curve, and surface. A hypersurface is a manifold or an algebraic variety of dimension , which is embedded in an ambient space of dimension , generally a Euclidea ...

s in P⁴. He is now Professor of Mathematics at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. As an extracurricular activity, he translates Russian poetry into English and publishes books, including his own translation of a textbook () in geometry by

Andrey Kiselyov Andrey Petrovich Kiselyov (russian: Андрей Петрович Киселёв; December 12, 1852 – November 8, 1940) was a Russian and Soviet mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in the ...

and poetry of

Marina Tsvetaeva Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva (russian: Марина Ивановна Цветаева, p=mɐˈrʲinə ɪˈvanəvnə tsvʲɪˈtaɪvə; 31 August 1941) was a Russian poet. Her work is considered among some of the greatest in twentieth century Russia ...

. Givental is a father of two.

References

*.
Sumizdat
publisher of English translation of ''Geometry''