Leonid Polterovich - Biography
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Leonid Polterovich studied in Sinai's and Arnold's seminars at Moscow State University. In 1990, he joined the School of Mathematical Sciences, Tel Aviv University where he holds the Gordon Chair in Dynamical Systems and Symplectic Topology since 2003. In 2009-2012 he stayed at the University of Chicago, where, after return to Israel in 2012, he keeps a part time visiting position.

Polterovich's main contributions deal with symplectic and contact geometry and topology, a field of mathematics providing geometric language for problems of classical and quantum mechanics. Highlights of his work include sharp results on symplectic packings (with McDuff), triviality of local Lagrangian knots (with Eliashberg), and contact non-squeezing theorem (with Eliashberg and Kim). Polterovich surgery, a topological operation on Lagrangian submanifolds, has found applications in Lagrangian cobordisms and mirror symmetry. Polterovich advanced various aspects of Hofer's geometry on the group of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms. He discovered (with Eliashberg) a new geometric structure, a partial order, on the group of contact transformations. Polterovich (with Entov) initiated the development of function theory on symplectic manifolds, having applications to topology and related to quantum mechanics. He brought (with Shelukhin) methods of topological data analysis, an area of applied mathematics, into symplectic topology.

Polterovich received the European Mathematical Society award for young mathematicians (1996), the Erdos Prize (1998), and the Michael Bruno Memorial Award (2003). He held ERC Advanced Grant "Symplectic topology and its interactions: from dynamics to quantization" in the period 2013-2019. He delivered an award lecture "Precise measurements in symplectic topology" at the European Congress of Mathematics in 1996, an invited lecture "Geometry on the group of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms" at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1998, and a plenary lecture "Symplectic rigidity and quantum mechanics" at the European Congress of Mathematics in 2016.

Among Polterovich's administrative activities are serving as the Chair of the Scientific Committee of the 9th European Congress of Mathematics (ECM 2024), and as coeditor-in-chief of the journal Geometric and Functional Analysis (GAFA).

Full CV can be uploaded here: CV-Polterovich-April2024.pdf