Victor Gershevich Kac | |
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Born | |
Alma mater | Moscow State University (MS) Moscow State University (PhD) |
Known for |
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Awards |
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Scientific career | |
Fields | Mathematics |
Institutions | MIT |
Thesis | Simple Irreducible Graded Lie Algebras of Finite Growth (1968) |
Doctoral advisor | Èrnest 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.