The Squarepoint Foundation funds the Israel Gelfand Chair

The Squarepoint Foundation becomes a new supporter of IHES and will finance the Israel Gelfand Chair of Mathematics from 2024 to 2026. Through this funding, which facilitates research stays at IHES,  the Foundation affirms its support for basic sciences as well as the model of free and disinterested research which characterizes the Institute.

This Chair, created in 2014 by Emmanuel Ullmo, the director of IHES, makes it possible to invite, upon nomination from the Scientific Council, high-level mathematicians for visits of at least two months per year, for three consecutive years. The researchers thus selected contribute to the seminar program and have the opportunity to invite collaborators during their stay.

Since its creation, the Israel Gelfand Chair has allowed the Institute to welcome great scientists in different mathematical fields. Spencer Bloch, the first holder of the Chair, is now R.M. Hutchins Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago (United States). Samson Shatashvili, whose research is at the crossroads of theoretical physics and mathematics, is today University Chair of Natural Philosophy, Pure & Applied Mathematics at Trinity College Dublin (Ireland). Francis Brown is a professor at All Souls College, Oxford (UK). Sergiu Klainerman is a professor at Princeton University (United States). Olivia Caramello, whose research focuses on part of Gelfand’s own work, is an associate professor at Università degli Studi dell’Insubria (Italy).

The current holder of the Chair, Dennis Gaitsgory, is a researcher at the Max-Planck-Institute for Mathematics in Bonn (Germany). He interacted extensively with “disciples” of Israel Gelfand and is known for his research into the Langlands program.

 

Israel Gelfand (1913-2009) was one of the great mathematicians of the 20th century. His research has made major contributions in several mathematical fields. His work is also recognized in the field of biology. He is the author of several hundred articles and numerous books, and multiple theorems bear his name. He has received several prestigious awards recognizing the scope of his research, including the Wolf Prize in 1978 and the Kyoto Prize in 1989. Israel Gelfand made several research visits to IHES in the 1970s and 1980s before becoming a regular visitor, coming to the Institute every year between 1992 and 1998. The values of scientific excellence and knowledge sharing, fundamental to the Institute, were particularly dear to Israel Gelfand. IHES thus paid tribute to him by giving his name to this Chair which precisely combines these two values.