Maxim Kontsevich

Maxim Kontsevich
Born	25 August 1964 (1964-08-25) (age 47) Khimki, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Citizenship	Russia France
Nationality	Russian
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques University of Miami
Alma mater	Moscow State University, mexmat
Doctoral advisor	Don Bernard Zagier
Notable awards	Henri Poincaré Prize (1997) Fields Medal (1998) Crafoord Prize (2008)

Maxim Lvovich Kontsevich (Russian: Макси́м Льво́вич Конце́вич; born 25 August 1964) is a Russian mathematician. He is a professor at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques and a distinguished professor at the University of Miami. He received the Henri Poincaré Prize in 1997, the Fields Medal in 1998, and the Crafoord Prize in 2008.

Biography

Born into the family of Lev Rafailovich Kontsevich – Soviet orientalist and author of the Kontsevich system. After ranking second in the All-Union Mathematics Olympiads, he attended Moscow State University but left without a degree in 1985 to become a researcher at the Institute for Problems of Information Transmission in Moscow [1]. In 1992 he received his Ph.D. at the University of Bonn under Don Bernard Zagier. His thesis proves a conjecture by Edward Witten that two quantum gravitational models are equivalent.

His work concentrates on geometric aspects of mathematical physics, most notably on knot theory, quantization, and mirror symmetry. His most famous result is a formal deformation quantization that holds for any Poisson manifold. He also introduced knot invariants defined by complicated integrals analogous to Feynman integrals. In topological field theory, he introduced the moduli space of stable maps, which may be considered a mathematically rigorous formulation of the Feynman integral for topological string theory. These results are a part of his "contributions to four problems of geometry" for which he was awarded the Fields Medal in 1998.

See also

• Kontsevich integral
• Homological mirror symmetry
• Motivic integration
• Kontsevich quantization formula
• Ring of periods

References

• Fields Medal citation at the website of the 2002 International Congress of Mathematicians held in Beijing.
• Taubes, Clifford Henry (1998) "The work of Maxim Kontsevich". In Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians, Vol. I (Berlin, 1998). Doc. Math., Extra Vol. I, 119–126.

External links

• Maxim Kontsevich at the Mathematics Genealogy Project.
• AMS Profile of Maxim Kontsevich
• Official Homepage of Maxim Kontsevich

Persondata
Name	Kontsevich, Maxim
Alternative names	(Russian) Максим Львович Концевич;
Short description	Russian-born French mathematician and Fields Medallist
Date of birth	August 25, 1964
Place of birth	Russia
Date of death
Place of death