David Kazhdan

David Kazhdan
Born	20 June 1946 (1946-06-20) (age 65) Moscow, Soviet Union
Nationality	Israeli
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	Hebrew University of Jerusalem Harvard University
Doctoral advisor	Alexandre Kirillov
Doctoral students	Michael Finkelberg Alexander Polishchuk Karl Rumelhart Vladimir Voevodsky
Known for	Kazhdan–Lusztig polynomial Kazhdan–Margulis theorem Kazhdan's property (T)

David Kazhdan (Hebrew: דוד קשדן‎) or Každan, Kazhdan, formerly named Dmitry Aleksandrovich Kazhdan (until he left Soviet Union; Russian: Дми́трий Александро́вич Кажда́н), is a Soviet and Israeli mathematician known for work in representation theory.

Life

Kazhdan was born on 20 June 1946 in Moscow, USSR.^[1] His father is Alexander Kazhdan. He earned a doctorate under Alexandre Kirillov in 1969 and was a leading member of Israel Gelfand's school of mathematics. He is Jewish, and emigrated from the Soviet Union to take a position at Harvard University in 1975. He changed his name from Dmitri Aleksandrovich to David and became an Orthodox Jew around that time.

In 2005 he immigrated to Israel and is now a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as well as a professor emeritus at Harvard.

Kazhdan has four children. His son, Eli Kazhdan, was general director of Natan Sharansky's Yisrael BaAliyah political party (now merged with Likud).

Research

He is known for many collaborations: with Israel Gelfand, Victor Kac, George Lusztig (on an influential Kazhdan–Lusztig conjecture on Verma modules), with Grigory Margulis (Kazhdan–Margulis theorem), with Yuval Flicker and S. J. Patterson on the representations of metaplectic groups. Kazhdan's property (T) is now a much-studied aspect of representation theory.

Kazhdan held a MacArthur Fellowship from 1990 to 1995. One of his students was Vladimir Voevodsky, a recipient of the Fields Medal, a prize for young mathematicians of outstanding reputation. Since 2006, Kazhdan has been a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences. In 2008 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

References

1. ^ The MacArthur Fellows Program: the first decade, 1981-1991. 1993. p. 180. 

• American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Class of 2008

External links

• Official Harvard home page
• official Hebrew University home page
• David Kazhdan at the Mathematics Genealogy Project.

Persondata
Name	Kazhdan, Dave
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	20 June 1946
Place of birth	Moscow, Soviet Union
Date of death
Place of death