Caucher Birkar

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.