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Vitali Milman

Vitali Milman is an Israeli mathematician specializing in analysis and a professor at Tel Aviv University, who received the Israel Prize in 2024.

born 1939Concentration of measure phenomenonNew proof of Dvoretzky's theoremAsymptotic geometric analysis

Born: 22 August 1939, Odesa
Occupation: mathematician, university teacher
Education: National University of Kharkiv

Vitali Milman was born in 1939 in Odesa

Vitali Milman was born in 1939 in Odesa, in the Soviet Union. His father was the mathematician David Milman. His brother Pierre and his son Emanuel are also mathematicians.

He worked at the Institute for Low Temperatures of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He completed his Ph.D. at Kharkiv State University in 1965 under Boris Levin. He then became a senior researcher at the Institute of Chemical Physics, together with his brother.

In 1971 he gave a new proof of Dvoretzky's theorem and introduced the concentration of measure phenomenon. His work on finite dimensional Banach spaces led to the field of asymptotic geometric analysis. He has published over 150 papers, a monograph and 11 edited books.

He immigrated to Israel with his family in 1973 and joined Tel Aviv University with his father. He headed the department of pure mathematics for two years and has held the Argentina Chair since 1992. He was president of the Israel Mathematical Union and advised the Ministry of Science on immigrant scientists.