Vladimir G. DRINFELD
DRINFELD Vladimir Gershonovich is a Fields medalist and a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
He was born in 1954 in Kharkov. He studied at Moscow University in 1969-1974 as an undergraduate student and in 1974-1977 as a graduate student. Yuri Ivanovich Manin was his scientific advisor. Drinfeld defended his "candidate" thesis (Russian equivalent of Ph.D) in 1978 at Moscow University. He defended his "doctor" thesis (Russian equivalent of habilitation) in 1988 at Steklov Institute, Moscow. Since 1981 Drinfeld has been working at B.Verkin Institute for Low Temperature Physics&Engineering (Academy of Sciences of Ukraine). In 1990 he was awarded the Fields medal. In 1992 he was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
Drinfeld's main achievements are:
1)proof of the Langlands conjecture for GL(2) over a functional field;
2)quantum group theory.A survey of a part of his works can be found in his papers in the Proceedings of the International Congresses of Mathematics which took place in 1978 and 1986. See also Manin's paper "On the mathematical work of Vladimir Drinfeld", Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians-1990, pp.3-7.
Since 1990 Drinfeld has been working on geometric Langlands program.