The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences has been awarded to Claire Voisin (National Centre for Scientific Research, CNRS, France) and Yakov Eliashberg (Stanford University, United States) for work that has driven forward mathematical thought by breaking down barriers and bridging the space between two key areas of geometry.
The awardee researchers have made “outstanding contributions” to algebraic and and symplectic geometry, which explore “spaces in high dimensions, which are difficult to visualize and necessitate new mathematical techniques to understand and study,” said the committee in its citation.
Yakov Eliashberg earned his PhD in 1972 from what was then Leningrad University, under the direction of Vladimir Rokhlin. Since 1989 he has taught at Stanford University, where he is currently the Herald L. and Caroline L. Ritch Professor of Mathematics. Eliashberg has held visiting positions at universities in seven countries – from the U.S. to Japan by way of Switzerland and the United Kingdom – and is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Symplectic Geometry, as well as serving on the editorial board of Geometry and Topology. He has served as Chairman of the Simons Center Board of Trustees since 2018.
Claire Voisin received her PhD in 1986 from Université Paris-Sud, where she studied under Arnaud Beauville. That same year, she joined France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). She is currently a research professor at the Mathematics Institute of Jussieu–Paris Rive Gauche, a research facility whose parent organizations are the CNRS, Sorbonne University and the University of Paris. View our recent interview with Professor Voisin here.
To read more please visit: www.frontiersofknowledgeawards-fbbva.es/noticias/frontiers-knowledge-award-16th-edition-basic-sciences/