Research Areas:
Infinite-dimensional Algebras, Representation Theory, Applications of Lie Theory, Mathematical Physics

Prof. Igor Frenkel graduated from St. Petersburg State University with Honors Diploma in Mathematics. He emigrated to US several years later and earned a PhD in Mathematics from Yale University in 1980. After assuming postdoctoral positions at Yale University, Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, and Institute for Advanced Study, he obtained his first tenure position at Rutgers University. He returned back to Yale University in 1985 and is currently the Sol Goldman Family Professor of Mathematics in the Department of Mathematics there.

Prof. Frenkel studies finite and infinite dimensional symmetries and their realizations in algebraic, geometric, and analytic structures. This field of mathematics is called representation theory of groups and algebras. He has published and authored a series of research papers and books, including Vertex Operator Algebras and the Monster and Lectures on Representation Theory and Knizhnik-Zamolodchikov Equations, which have opened substantial new areas of research in the field of representation theory.

Prof. Frenkel is the recipient of fellowships from the Sloan Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2015 and a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences in 2018.