Efim Zelmanov | |
---|---|
Born | Efim Isaakovich Zelmanov September 7, 1955 |
Nationality | Russian, American |
Alma mater |
Novosibirsk State University Leningrad State University |
Known for | Nonassociative algebra |
Awards | Fields Medal (1994) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Mathematics |
Institutions |
University of Wisconsin–Madison University of Chicago Yale University University of California, San Diego Southern University of Science and Technology |
Doctoral students |
Efim Isaakovich Zelmanov ( Russian: Ефи́м Исаа́кович Зе́льманов; born 7 September 1955 in Khabarovsk) is a Russian-American [1] mathematician, known for his work on combinatorial problems in nonassociative algebra and group theory, including his solution of the restricted Burnside problem. He was awarded a Fields Medal at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Zürich in 1994.
Zelmanov was born into a Jewish family in Khabarovsk, Soviet Union (now in Russia). He entered Novosibirsk State University in 1972, when he was 17 years old. [2] He obtained a doctoral degree at Novosibirsk State University in 1980, and a higher degree at Leningrad State University in 1985. He had a position in Novosibirsk until 1987, when he left the Soviet Union.
In 1990 he moved to the United States, becoming a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He was at the University of Chicago in 1994/5, then at Yale University. In 1996 he became a Distinguished Professor at the Korea Institute for Advanced Study and in 2002, he became a professor at the University of California, San Diego. [3] In 2022, he moved to the People's Republic of China and joined the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China. [4] [5] He served as a chair professor and the scientific director of the SUSTech International Center for Mathematics.
Zelmanov was elected a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2001, [6] becoming, at the age of 47, the youngest member of the mathematics section of the academy. [7] He is also an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1996) [8] and a foreign member of the Korean Academy of Science and Engineering and of the Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences. [9] In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. [10]
Zelmanov gave invited talks at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Warsaw (1983), Kyoto (1990) and Zurich (1994). [11] He delivered the 2004 Turán Memorial Lectures. [12] He was awarded Honorary Doctor degrees from the University of Hagen, Germany (1997), [13], the University of Alberta, Canada (2011), [14] Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine (2012), [15] the Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo in Santander, Spain (2015) [16] and the University of Lincoln, UK (2016). [17] [18]
Zelmanov's early work was on Jordan algebras in the case of infinite dimensions. He was able to show that Glennie's identity in a certain sense generates all identities that hold. He then showed that the Engel identity for Lie algebras implies nilpotence, in the case of infinite dimensions.