Andrei Zelevinsky

Zelevinsky graduated in 1969 from the Moscow Mathematical School No. 2.[2] After winning a silver medal as a member of the USSR team at the International Mathematical Olympiad[3] he was admitted without examination to the mathematics department of Moscow State University where he obtained his PhD in 1978 under the mentorship of Joseph Bernstein, Alexandre Kirillov and Israel Gelfand.[4]

He worked[5] in the mathematical laboratory of Vladimir Keilis-Borok at the Institute of Earth Science (1977–85), and at the Council for Cybernetics of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (1985–90). In the early 1980s, at a great personal risk, he taught at the Jewish People's University,[6] an unofficial organization offering first-class mathematics education to talented students denied admission to Moscow State University's math department.

In 1990–91, Zelevinsky was a visiting professor at Cornell University, and from 1991 until his death was on faculty at Northeastern University, Boston. With his wife, Galina, he had a son and a daughter; he also had several grandchildren.[7]

Zelevinsky is a relative of the physicists Vladimir Zelevinsky and Tanya Zelevinsky.

Zelevinsky's most notable achievement is the discovery (with Sergey Fomin) of cluster algebras. His other contributions include:

• Bernstein–Zelevinsky classification of representations of p-adic groups;
• introduction (jointly with Israel Gelfand and Mikhail Kapranov) of A-systems of hypergeometric equations (also known as GKZ-systems)[8] and development of the theory of hyperdeterminants;[9][10]
• generalization of the Littlewood–Richardson rule and Robinson–Schensted correspondence using the combinatorics of "pictures";
• work (jointly with Arkady Berenstein and Sergey Fomin) on total positivity;
• work (with Sergey Fomin) on the Laurent phenomenon, including its applications to Somos sequences.

• Invited lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians (Berlin, 1998)[11]
• Humboldt Research Award (2004)
• Fellow (2012) of the American Mathematical Society[12]
• University Distinguished Professorship (2013) at Northeastern University[13]
• Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research (2018)[14]

• Home page of Andrei Zelevinsky (including CV)
• Conference in memory of Andrei Zelevinsky
• Publications of Andrei Zelevinsky (in Russian)
• Publications of Andrei Zelevinsky (in English)
• Research Focus: Andrei Zelevinsky's Cluster Algebras
• Live journal run by Andrei Zelevinsky from 2007 to 2013
• Andrei Zelevinsky at the Mathematics Genealogy Project