Margulis, Gregory

Gregory Margulis, in full Gregory Aleksandrovich Margulis, (born February 24, 1946, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.), Russian-born mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal (1978) for his contributions to the theory of Lie groups and the Abel Prize (2020) for his work involving probability theory and dynamical systems.

Margulis attended Moscow State University (Ph.D., 1970). In 1978 he was named a recipient of the Fields Medal, but he was not allowed by the Soviet government to travel to Helsinki, Finland, to formally receive the award. The following year, however, he was permitted to travel, and he subsequently held appointments at various institutions. In 1990 Margulis immigrated to the United States. After brief stays at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, he was appointed to a position at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.

Margulis’s early work was largely involved in solving a number of problems in the theory of Lie groups. In particular, Margulis proved a long-standing conjecture by Atle Selberg concerning discrete subgroups of semisimple Lie groups. The techniques he used in his work were drawn from combinatorics, ergodic theory, dynamical systems, and differential geometry.

In addition to the Fields Medal and Abel Prize, Margulis was also awarded the Wolf Prize (2005). His publications included Discrete Subgroups of Semisimple Lie Groups (1991) and On Some Aspects of the Theory of Anosov Systems: With a Survey by Richard Sharp (2004).