First ESI-Medal goes to Anton Alekseev

The Medal of the Erwin Schrödinger Institute for Mathematics and Physics for the year 2020 is awarded to Anton Alekseev from the University of Geneva.

Prof. Alekseev is honoured for his recent outstanding contributions to mathematics, in particular for the discovery of the link between the Grothendieck-Teichmüller group and the long-standing Kashiwara-Vergne problem in Lie theory, for the program of tropicalization of Poisson structures, and for the proof of the Goldman-Turaev formality in 2-dimensional topology. His work unites brilliant intuition, deep knowledge, and remarkable technical skills.

The award ceremony will take place on September 24, 2020 at the Erwin Schrödinger Institute.

Anton Alekseev

Anton Alekseev studied at the Leningrad State University and was trained at the Steklov Mathematical Institute in St. Petersburg where he obtained his PhD in Mathematical Physics in 1991. After research positions in Zurich and Uppsala, he became full professor for mathematics at the University of Geneva in 2001.

Alekseev has worked on a wide range of topics in mathematical physics and pure mathematics including algebra and geometry, as well as mechanics and field theory. He has made seminal contributions in these disciplines, and often his work uncovers connections and unexpected links between them.

His works on the Kashiwara-Vergne conjecture on the structure of the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff formula in Lie theory are groundbreaking. With E. Meinreken he obtained a proof in 2006, in further works with C. Torossian and others he uncovered surprising relations of this algebraic problem to the theory of Drinfeld associators and later also to the topology of 2-dimensional surfaces.

Webpage of Prof. Alekseev: https://www.unige.ch/math/en/people/alekseev/

The Medal of the Erwin Schrödinger Institute for Mathematics and Physics

The Medal of the Erwin Schrödinger International Institute for Mathematics and Physics, or ESI-Medal, awarded in 2020 for the first time, has been created to recognize outstanding achievements in any area of mathematics or physics, including contributions at the interface of the two fields.

The ESI-Medal is awarded annually and emphasis is generally given to recent achievements not older than ten years. There is no age limitation for the recipient and ordinarily the ESI-Medal is awarded to one person.

The recipient of the ESI-Medal receives a medal, a certificate and a monetary award of 4,000 Euro.

Nominations for the ESI-Medal can be made by organizers of ESI Thematic Programmes taking place in the year following the nomination deadline, former members of the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) of the ESI, former recipients of the ESI-Medal, former Directors of the ESI and the President of the ESI Association. The recipient is selected by the Scientific Advisory Board of the ESI.