David Kazhdan

David Kazhdan was born in 1946 in Moscow

Kazhdan was born Dmitry Aleksandrovich Kazhdan on 20 June 1946 in Moscow. His father, Alexander Kazhdan, was editor of the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium.

He earned a doctorate at Moscow University in 1969 under Alexandre Kirillov. He then took part in the seminar of Israel Gelfand.

In 1975 he left the Soviet Union for a professorship at Harvard University. Around that time he changed his first name to David and became an Orthodox Jew. His research includes property (T), developed in 1967, and joint work with Gelfand, George Lusztig and Grigory Margulis.

In 2002 he immigrated to Israel and became a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he served until he retired in 2014. On 6 October 2013 he was badly injured in a hit and run accident while riding a bicycle in Jerusalem. He has 4 children.