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Caucher Birkar

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Kurdish mathematician

Person · Open Library

Works
1

Top works

  • Higher Dimensional Algebraic Geometry

via Open Library + Wikidata

Quotes

  • In Tehran university, at the math club, where I was studying the pictures of Fields medalists were lining the walls. I looked at them and said to myself, ‘Will I ever meet one of these people?’ At that time in Iran, I couldn’t even know that I’d be able to go to the West.
  • To go from the point that I didn’t imagine meeting these people to the point where someday I hold a medal myself — I just couldn’t imagine that this would come true.
  • I read all these books and I had the feeling that just reading things is not enough. I also wanted to create my own stuff, to create something new.

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

Key facts

Born
Fereydoun Derakhshani , 1978 (age 47 – 48), Marivan County , Iran
Citizenship
Iran , Britain
Alma mater
University of Tehran (BSc), University of Nottingham (PhD)
Awards
Leverhulme Prize (2010), Moore Prize (2016), Fields Medal (2018)
Fields
Algebraic geometry Birational geometry
Institutions
Tsinghua University , University of Cambridge
Thesis
Topics in Modern Algebraic Geometry (2004)
Doctoral advisor
Ivan Fesenko Vyacheslav Shokurov
Website
ymsc .tsinghua .edu .cn /en /info /1031 /1892 .htm

via Wikipedia infobox

~5 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Caucher Birkar FRS (Kurdish: کۆچەر بیرکار, romanized: Koçer Bîrkar, lit. 'migrant mathematician'; born Fereydoun Derakhshani (Kurdish: فەرەیدوون درەخشانی، Persian: فریدون درخشانی); July 1978) is a UK-based Iranian Kurdish and British mathematician (born in Iran) and a professor at Tsinghua University. He is also an Honorary Professor at the University of Nottingham.

Birkar is an important contributor to modern birational geometry. In 2010 he received the Leverhulme Prize in mathematics and statistics for his contributions to algebraic geometry, and in 2016, shared the AMS Moore Prize for the article "Existence of minimal models for varieties of log general type". He was awarded the Fields Medal in 2018, "for his proof of boundedness of Fano varieties and contributions to the minimal model program". In his office at the university, Birkar has two photographs of Alexander Grothendieck, his favorite mathematician, who like Birkar, was a refugee and Fields medalist.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Caucher Birkar” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.