George Lusztig Wins 2022 Wolf Prize in Mathematics

George Lusztig, past Distinguished Visiting Professor (1998–99) and past Member (1969–71, 1988, 2020) in the School of Mathematics, has won the 2022 Wolf Prize in Mathematics for his “groundbreaking contributions to representation theory and related areas.” 

Cited as one of the “great mathematicians of our time,” Lusztig joins a group of laureates that includes numerous scholars from the Institute: Freeman Dyson, Paul Erdős, Robert Langlands, Peter Sarnak, and André Weil, to name just a few. 

During his most recent stay at IAS, Lusztig studied total positivity in reductive groups, character sheaves, and properties of unipotent classes. He is largely lauded for his work on representation theory and algebraic groups, particularly finite reductive groups, Hecke algebras, p-adic groups, quantum groups, and Weyl groups. 

The Wolf Foundation has awarded the Wolf Prize since 1978. The prestigious award carries with it a monetary award of $100,000. Since its inception, 345 scientists and artists from around the world have been honored. Honorees are formally presented the prize during a ceremony at the Knesset (Israel's Parliament), in Jerusalem.