Saharon Shelah | |
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Saharon Shelah in his office in Rutgers University, September 6, 2005. Photo by Andrzej Rosłanowski.
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Born |
Jerusalem, British Mandate for Palestine |
July 3, 1945
Residence | Jerusalem, Israel |
Nationality | Israel |
Fields | Mathematics |
Institutions | Hebrew University, Rutgers University |
Alma mater | Tel Aviv University (B.Sc) Tel Aviv University (M.Sc.) Hebrew University (Ph.D.) |
Doctoral advisor | Michael O. Rabin |
Doctoral students | Uri Abraham, Shai Ben-David, Rami Grossberg, Menachem Kojman, Mati Rubin |
Known for | Mathematical logic, model theory, set theory |
Notable awards |
Erdős Prize (1977) George Pólya Prize (1992) Bolyai Prize (2000) Wolf Prize (2001) Israel Prize (1998) Leroy P. Steele Prize (2013) |
Saharon Shelah (Hebrew: שהרן שלח) is an Israeli mathematician. He is a professor of mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Rutgers University in New Jersey.
Shelah was born in Jerusalem on July 3, 1945. He is the son of the Israeli poet and political activist Yonatan Ratosh. He received his PhD for his work on stable theories in 1969 from the Hebrew University.
Shelah is married to Yael, and has three children.
Shelah wanted to be a scientist while at primary school, but initially was attracted to physics and biology, not mathematics. Later he found mathematical beauty in studying geometry: He said, "But when I reached the ninth grade I began studying geometry and my eyes opened to that beauty—a system of demonstration and theorems based on a very small number of axioms which impressed me and captivated me." At the age of 15, he decided to become a mathematician, a choice cemented after reading Abraham Halevy Fraenkel's book "An Introduction to Mathematics".
He received a B.Sc. from Tel Aviv University in 1964, served in the Israel Defense Forces Army between 1964 and 1967, and obtained a M.Sc. from Tel Aviv University in 1967. He then worked as a Teaching Assistant at the Institute of Mathematics of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem while completing a Ph.D. there under the supervision of Michael Oser Rabin, on a study of stable theories.
Shelah was a Lecturer at Princeton University during 1969-70, and then worked as an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles during 1970-71. He became a professor at Hebrew University in 1974, a position he continues to hold.
He has been a Visiting Professor at the following Universities: the university of Wisconsin (1977–78), the University of California, Berkeley (1978 and 1982), the University of Michigan (1984–85), at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia (1985), and Rutgers University, New Jersey (1985).