Chareidi Hebrew University Mathematician Wins Prestigious Shaw Prize

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Hebrew University Professor David Kazhdan has received the prestigious Shaw Prize on his contributions to the field of mathematics, the first Israeli ever to win the prize.

Kazhdan is one of two recipients of the prize; he shared the $1.2 million prize with another researcher from the University of Chicago, Alexander Beilinson. They won the prize for their “huge influence on and profound contributions to representation theory, as well as many other areas of mathematics, ” according to the prize committee.

Kazhdan, an Israel Prize laureate from 2012, immigrated to Israel in 2004 after serving as a professor of mathematics at Harvard University for 30 years. In 1975 he emigrated to the US from the former Soviet Union where he was born. Kazhdan became religious while still in the Soviet Union. He is married and has four children.

The Shaw Prize honors individuals who have recently achieved distinguished and significant advances in the fields of astronomy, life science and medicine, and mathematical sciences.

“This is a great honor for me. Of course, I was very happy when I heard, and I’m more than happy to receive the award. But I didn’t do anything, I’ve just engaged in math my whole life – and not for my own sake. I feel as though I’m in the good company of scholars and mathematicians who have received the award thus far,” said Kazhdan.

Kazhdan currently serves as a member of the National Academy of Israel and of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States.

In 2016, the professor received the EMET Prize for Art, Science and Culture, an Israeli prize awarded annually for excellence in academic and profession achievements; the Rothschild Prize in 2010, an Israeli prize designed to support the advancement of science and the humanities in Israel, and he also received the MacArthur Fellowship from 1990 to 1995.