Dror Bar-Natan (; born January 30, 1966) is a professor at the

University of Toronto Department of Mathematics The University of Toronto Department of Mathematics is an academic department within the University of Toronto Faculty of Arts and Science, Faculty of Arts & Science at the University of Toronto. It is located at the university's University of To ...

, Canada. His main research interests include

knot theory In topology, knot theory is the study of knot (mathematics), mathematical knots. While inspired by knots which appear in daily life, such as those in shoelaces and rope, a mathematical knot differs in that the ends are joined so it cannot be und ...

finite type invariant In the mathematical theory of knots, a finite type invariant, or Vassiliev invariant (so named after Victor Anatolyevich Vassiliev), is a knot invariant that can be extended (in a precise manner to be described) to an invariant of certain singul ...

s, and

Khovanov homology In mathematics, Khovanov homology is an oriented link invariant that arises as the cohomology of a cochain complex. It may be regarded as a categorification of the Jones polynomial. It was developed in the late 1990s by Mikhail Khovanov. Overv ...

Education

Bar-Natan earned his

B.Sc. A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

in mathematics at

Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) is a Public university, public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Located in northwest Tel Aviv, the university is the center of teaching and ...

in 1984. After performing his military service as a teacher, he went to study at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

in 1987. He obtained his Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton in 1991, under the direction of

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

Edward Witten Edward Witten (born August 26, 1951) is an American theoretical physics, theoretical physicist known for his contributions to string theory, topological quantum field theory, and various areas of mathematics. He is a professor emeritus in the sc ...

Professorship

After holding a

Benjamin Peirce Benjamin Peirce (; April 4, 1809 – October 6, 1880) was an American mathematician who taught at Harvard University for approximately 50 years. He made contributions to celestial mechanics, statistics, number theory, algebra, and the philoso ...

Assistant Professorship at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

for four years from 1991 to 1995, he returned to Israel, and became Associate Professor at the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; ) is an Israeli public university, public research university based in Jerusalem. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, the public university officially opened on 1 April 1925. ...

. He moved to the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

in 2002, and was promoted to Full Professor in 2006.Dror Bar-Natan — Curriculum Vitae
/ref>

Personal life

Bar-Natan holds US, Israeli, and Canadian citizenship, and currently resides in Canada. Bar-Natan originally refused to take the Canadian citizenship oath because it would require him to swear allegiance to royalty. He later decided to become a citizen but publicly announced his intention to renounce the oath immediately after becoming a citizen, which he did so in front of the presiding judge at his citizenship ceremony on November 30, 2015. From his former marriage to mathematician Yael Karshon he has two sons, Assaf and Itai.

Research

In 1999, Bar-Natan collaborated on a paper with the goal of mathematically refuting claims made in ''

The Bible Code The Bible code (, ), also known as the Torah code, is a purported set of Cryptography, encoded words within a Hebrew text of the Torah that, according to proponents, has predicted significant historical events. The statistical likelihood of th ...

'' by Michael Drosnin that hidden messages could be deciphered from within the

Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...

. In particular, the paper demonstrated that practically any "code" could be found within the Bible, thereby debunking Drosnin's "discovery" of specific codes. This work is outside the main scope of his academic interests, although he is known for it because of the popularity of ''The Bible Code''.Bar-Natan, D with Brendan McKay,

Gil Kalai Gil Kalai (; born 1955) is an Israeli mathematician and computer scientist. He is the Henry and Manya Noskwith Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, professor of computer science at the Interdisciplinary Center ...

and

Maya Bar-Hillel Maya Bar-Hillel (; born 1943) is a professor emeritus of psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Known for her work on inaccuracies in human reasoning about probability, she has also studied decision theory in connection with Newcomb's ...

; Statistical Science 14-2 (1999) 150-173. Academically, Bar-Natan has made significant contributions to the formalization of

. Bar-Natan was a member of the Editorial Board for the journal ''

Compositio Mathematica ''Compositio Mathematica'' is a monthly peer-reviewed mathematics journal established by L.E.J. Brouwer in 1935. It is owned by the Foundation Compositio Mathematica, and since 2004 it has been published on behalf of the Foundation by the London ...

'' for 10 years, until 2010.

Selected publication

References

External links

*
Citizenship disavowal website
maintained by Bar-Natan {{DEFAULTSORT:Bar-Natan, Dror 20th-century Israeli mathematicians 21st-century Israeli mathematicians Topologists Academic staff of the University of Toronto Tel Aviv University alumni Princeton University alumni Harvard University Department of Mathematics faculty Canadian mathematicians 1966 births Living people