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Hillel Furstenberg

Hillel Furstenberg is a German-born Israeli mathematician and professor emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, known for applying probability and ergodic theory to number theory and Lie groups.

born 1935Ergodic proof of Szemerédi's theoremThe Furstenberg boundaryTopological proof of infinite primesThe 2020 Abel Prize

Born: 29 September 1935, Berlin
Occupation: mathematician, pedagogue, university teacher
Education: Princeton University, Yeshiva University, Marsha Stern Talmudical Academy

Hillel Furstenberg was born in 1935 in Berlin

Furstenberg was born in Berlin in 1935 to a German Jewish family. In 1939, shortly after Kristallnacht, the family fled to New York City and settled in Washington Heights.

He earned his BA and MSc at Yeshiva University in 1955. As a student he published a topological proof that there are infinitely many primes. He then completed a PhD at Princeton University under Salomon Bochner in 1958.

He taught at MIT from 1959 to 1960 and joined the University of Minnesota in 1961, where he became a full professor. In 1965 he moved to Israel and joined the Einstein Institute of Mathematics at the Hebrew University. His work linked random walks on groups to group structure, and in 1977 he gave an ergodic proof of Szemerédi's theorem.

He retired in 2003. He received the Israel Prize in 1993, the Wolf Prize in 2007 and the Abel Prize in 2020 with Gregory Margulis. He married Rochelle Cohen, a journalist and literary critic, in 1958, and they have 5 children.