KONTSEVICH, MAXIM

born Aug. 25, 1964, Khimki, Russia, U.S.S.R. Russian mathematician who won the Fields Medal in 1998 for his work in algebraic geometry and algebraic topology. Kontsevich studied mathematics at Moscow State University from 1980 to 1985 before receiving his doctorate (1992) from the University of Bonn. He held positions in Germany at the University of Bonn; in the United States at Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of California at Berkeley, and Rutgers University; and in France at the Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies, Bures-sur-Yvette. His first success was to prove a conjecture of fellow Fields Medalist Edward Witten about the moduli space of algebraic curves. He then extended these ideas to produce many new invariants for knots and three-dimensional manifolds. He established theorems about the number of rational curves on Calabi-Yau three-manifolds that proved decisive in the development of mirror symmetry, a theory that unites methods from mathematical physics and classical algebraic geometry.