Biosketch

Vladimir Drinfeld is a Harry Pratt Judson Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He works in the general areas of algebraic geometry, group representations and automorphic forms. He is known for his works on the Langlands program and quantum groups.

Drinfeld grew up in Kharkov, Ukraine (then USSR). He graduated from Moscow University with a B.Sc. in mathematics in 1974. He obtained his Ph.D. in mathematics at Moscow University in 1978. Then he worked at Bashkir University, Kharkov University, and the Institute of Low Temperatures (Kharkov). He has been on the faculty at the University of Chicago since 1999. Drinfeld is a corresponding member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a foreign member of the French Academy of Sciences.

Research Interests

Vladimir Drinfeld proved the global Langlands conjecture for GL(2) over function fields. Together with Gerard Laumon, he originated the so-called geometric Langlands program (with automorphic sheaves playing the role of automorphic functions). He also did some other work in algebraic geometry and algebra (classification of instantons, integrable systems, quantum groups, DG categories, chiral algebras, character sheaves on unipotent groups). He is now working on the geometric Langlands program.

Membership Type

Member

Election Year

2016

Primary Section

Section 11: Mathematics