Alexander Merkurjev

Alexander Merkurjev was born in St. Petersburg (Leningrad), Russia. In 1977 he graduated from St. Petersburg University, and he received his Ph.D. there in 1979 under the direction of Anatoly Yakovlev. In 1983 he earned the Doctor of Sciences degree from St. Petersburg University for the work “Norm residue homomorphism of degree two." In 1983 Merkurjev won the Young Mathematician Prize of the St. Petersburg Mathematical Society for his work on algebraic K-theory. In 1995 he was awarded the Humboldt Prize. In 2012 Merkurjev was awarded the Cole Prize in Algebra for his work on the essential dimension of groups.

In 1977 Merkurjev became a professor at St. Petersburg University. Since 1997 he has been a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Merkurjev’s interests lie in algebraic K-theory, algebraic groups, algebraic theory of quadratic forms, essential dimension. He was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians (Berkeley, 1986). Two times he delivered an invited address at the European Congress of Mathematics (1992, 1996); he was a plenary speaker in 1996 (Budapest).

As a Guggenheim Fellow he will focus on the study of the complexity of homogeneous spaces of algebraic groups.