Harry Kesten

Harry Kesten
Harry Kesten at Cornell University, 1970
Born	Harry Kesten (1931-11-19) 19 November 1931 (age 85) Germany
Nationality	American
Fields	Mathematics Probability Mathematical analysis Statistical mechanics Geometric group theory
Institutions	Cornell University Hebrew University Princeton University
Alma mater	Cornell University
Thesis	Symmetric Random Walks on Groups (1958)
Doctoral advisor	Mark Kac
Doctoral students	Barry Belkin Maury Bramson Pablo Fierens Edmond Granirer James Hutton Kenji Ichihara Antal Jarai Steven Kalikow Eric Key Sungchul Lee J.-H. Lou Heinrich Matzinger Grant Ritter Rahul Roy Tom Ryan David Stephenson David Tanny Yu Zhang
Notable awards	Guggenheim Fellow (2014) Alfred P. Sloane Fellow (2010) Brouwer Medal (1981) Wald Memorial Lecturer, Institute of Mathematical Statistics (1986) George Pólya Prize from the SIAM (1994) Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the AMS (2001) Member of National Academy of Sciences (1983) Correspondent Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Docteur Honoris Causa, Université Paris-Sud 11 (2007) Fellow, American Mathematical Society (2012).
Spouse	Doraline Kesten
Children	Michael Kesten
Website www.math.cornell.edu/People/Faculty/kesten.html

Harry Kesten (born 19 November 1931, Germany) is an American mathematician best known for his work in probability, most notably on random walks on groups and graphs, random matrices, branching processes, and percolation theory.

Kesten grew up in the Netherlands, where he moved with his parents in 1933 to escape the Nazis. He received his Ph.D. in 1958 at Cornell University under supervision of Mark Kac. He was an instructor at Princeton University and the Hebrew University before returning to Cornell where he is now Professor Emeritus of mathematics.

Kesten's work includes many fundamental contributions across almost the whole of probability, including the following highlights.

A volume of papers was published in Kesten's honor in 1999.