Lindenstrauss, Elon

Elon Lindenstrauss, (born Aug. 1, 1970, Jerusalem), Israeli mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 2010 for his work in ergodic theory.

Lindenstrauss received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1991. He stayed at that university for graduate school, receiving a master’s degree and a doctorate in mathematics in 1995 and 1999, respectively. He was at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., from 1999 to 2001, and he held the position of assistant professor of mathematics at Stanford University, Stanford, Calif., from 2001 to 2003. He was a visiting member at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University from 2003 to 2005. He became a professor at Princeton University in 2004 and stayed there until 2010. Concurrently he was a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem beginning in 2008.

Lindenstrauss was awarded the Fields Medal at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Hyderabad, India, in 2010. His work involved ergodic theory (a branch of mathematics that arose from statistical physics), which he used to make significant progress on problems in number theory, such as the Littlewood conjecture about approximations to irrational numbers, and in quantum chaos, such as the quantum unique ergodicity conjecture.