19/01/2018

Gregory Margulis: Blocked by the Cold War

Gregory Margulis was born in Moscow, in the former Soviet Union, in 1946. He studied Mathematics at Moscow University and completed his doctorate at the same institution in 1970.

He gained notoriety for his work on Lie Group Theory. Together with fellow Soviet scientist David Kazhdan, he produced the Kazhdan-Margulis Theorem, but it was from 1975 onwards that his Superrigidity Theorem attracted the attention of the mathematical community.

In 1978, at the height of the Cold War, he was awarded the Fields Medal at the 18th International Congress of Mathematicians in Helsinki, Finland, but his exit visa was denied by Soviet authorities and he was unable to attend the event in person.

Of Jewish origin, Margulis had "close enemies," such as the Soviet mathematician Lev Pontryagin. Accused of antisemitism, Pontryagin was a member of the executive committee of the International Mathematical Union ( IMU) at the time and opposed the selection of his compatriot for the prize.

The following year, Margulis finally received her Fields Medal after being granted permission by the government to leave the country for a period of three months, during which she visited the University of Bonn (Germany).

In 1990, the mathematician immigrated to the United States, where he worked as a researcher at important educational institutions such as Harvard and Princeton, until he was appointed to a position at Yale University, where he remains today as the Erastus L. De Forest Professor of Mathematics.

Elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2001, he also received the Wolf Prize in 2005 for his contributions to mathematics.