George Lusztig

{{Infobox scientist

| name = George Lusztig

| image =

| image_size =

| caption =

| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1946|5|20}}

| birth_place = Timișoara, Kingdom of Romania

| death_date =

| death_place =

| citizenship = Romanian, British, American

| fields = Mathematics

| workplaces = University of Warwick
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

| alma_mater = University of Bucharest (BSc)
Princeton University (PhD)

| doctoral_advisor = Michael Atiyah
William Browder

| doctoral_students = Corrado de Concini
Ian Grojnowski
Xuhua He

| known_for = Crystal base
Deligne–Lusztig theory
Kazhdan–Lusztig polynomial

| awards = ICM Speaker (1974, 1983, 1990)
Berwick Prize (1977)
Guggenheim Fellowship (1982)
FRS (1983)
Cole Prize (1985)
Brouwer Medal (1999)
Leroy P. Steele Prize (2008)
Shaw Prize (2014)
{{no wrap|Wolf Prize in Mathematics (2022)}}

}}

George Lusztig (born Gheorghe Lusztig; May 20, 1946) is a Romanian-born American mathematician and Abdun Nur Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was a Norbert Wiener Professor in the Department of Mathematics from 1999 to 2009.

Education and career

Born in Timișoara to a Hungarian-Jewish family, he did his undergraduate studies at the University of Bucharest, graduating in 1968. Later that year he left Romania for the United Kingdom, where he spent several months at the University of Warwick and Oxford University. In 1969 he moved to the United States, where he went to work for two years with Michael Atiyah at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He received his PhD in mathematics in 1971 after completing a doctoral dissertation, titled "Novikov's higher signature and families of elliptic operators", under the supervision of William Browder and Michael Atiyah.{{MathGenealogy|id=1281}}{{Cite book|last=Lusztig|first=George|url=https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/1547174|title=Novikov's higher signature and families of elliptic operators|date=1971|language=en}}

Lusztig worked for almost seven years at the University of Warwick. His involvement at the university encompassed a Research Fellowship, (1971–72); lecturer in Mathematics, (1972–74); and Professor of Mathematics, (1974–78). In 1978, he accepted a chair at MIT.{{cite web

| url=http://math.mit.edu/people/profile?pid=164

| title=George Lusztig Abdun-Nur Professor of Mathematics

| publisher=MIT Mathematics Department

| access-date=16 November 2011

| archive-date=27 September 2013

| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130927154708/http://math.mit.edu/people/profile?pid=164

| url-status=dead

}}{{cite web

|url = http://www.gap-system.org/~history/Biographies/Lusztig.html

|archive-url = https://archive.today/20121221033722/http://www.gap-system.org/~history/Biographies/Lusztig.html

|url-status = dead

|archive-date = 21 December 2012

|title = George Lusztig

|publisher = The GAP Group

|access-date = 16 November 2011

}}

Contributions

He is known for his work on representation theory, in particular for the objects closely related to algebraic groups, such as finite reductive groups, Hecke algebras, $p$ -adic groups, quantum groups, and Weyl groups. He essentially paved the way for modern representation theory. This has included fundamental new concepts, including the character sheaves, the Deligne–Lusztig varieties, and the Kazhdan–Lusztig polynomials.Carter, Roger W., [http://projecteuclid.org/Dienst/UI/1.0/Summarize/euclid.nmj/1150810003 A survey of the work of George Lusztig], Nagoya Mathematical Journal 182 (2006), pp. 1–45.

Awards and honors

In 1983, Lusztig was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society. In 1985 Lusztig won the Cole Prize (Algebra). He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1992. He received the Brouwer Medal in 1999, the National Order of Faithful Service in 2003 and the Leroy P. Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Mathematics in 2008. In 2012, he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society{{cite web |title=List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society |publisher=American Mathematical Society |date=2013 |url=https://www.ams.org/cgi-bin/fellows/fellows.cgi#l |access-date=2 February 2013 }} and in 2014 he received the Shaw Prize in Mathematics.{{Cite web |first=Bendta |last=Schroeder |title=George Lusztig awarded the Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences |publisher=Massachusetts Institute of Technology |date=2 June 2014 |url=https://news.mit.edu/2014/george-lusztig-awarded-shaw-prize-mathematical-sciences |access-date=5 June 2020 }} In 2022, he received the Wolf Prize in Mathematics.{{cite web |title=Wolf Prize Laureate in Mathematics 2022 |publisher=Wolf Foundation |date=2022 |url=https://wolffund.org.il/2022/02/08/george-lusztig/ |access-date=9 February 2022 |archive-date=8 February 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220208180113/https://wolffund.org.il/2022/02/08/george-lusztig/ |url-status=dead }}

References

External links

{{IMO results|id=9829}}
[https://books.google.com/books?id=jn_GG55gKm8C&pg=PA1038 George Lusztig's entry] in the International Who's Who.
[https://web.math.sinica.edu.tw/mathmedia/interview18.jsp?mID=40401 專訪 George Lusztig 教授 (Interview with Prof. George Lusztig, in Chinese)] in 數學傳播.

Category:1946 births

Category:Living people

Category:20th-century American mathematicians

Category:20th-century Romanian mathematicians

Category:21st-century American mathematicians

Category:21st-century Romanian mathematicians

Category:Academics of the University of Warwick

Category:American people of Romanian-Jewish descent

Category:Brouwer Medalists

Category:Fellows of the American Mathematical Society

Category:Fellows of the Royal Society

Category:Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars