Victor Kac

Victor Gershevich Kac
Born (1943-12-19) December 19, 1943 (age 80)
Buguruslan, Orenburg Oblast, Russian SFSR
Alma materMoscow State University (MS)
Moscow State University (PhD)
Known for
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsMIT
Thesis Simple Irreducible Graded Lie Algebras of Finite Growth  (1968)
Doctoral advisorÈrnest Borisovich Vinberg[1]

Victor Gershevich (Grigorievich) Kac (Russian: Виктор Гершевич (Григорьевич) Кац; born 19 December 1943) is a Soviet and American mathematician at MIT, known for his work in representation theory. He co-discovered[2] Kac–Moody algebras, and used the Weyl–Kac character formula for them to reprove the Macdonald identities. He classified the finite-dimensional simple Lie superalgebras, and found the Kac determinant formula for the Virasoro algebra. He is also known for the Kac–Weisfeiler conjectures with Boris Weisfeiler.

  1. ^ Mathematics Genealogy Project: https://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=37054
  2. ^ Stephen Berman, Karen Parshall "Victor Kac and Robert Moody — their paths to Kac–Moody-Algebras", Mathematical Intelligencer, 2002, Nr.1 [1]