Vitali Milman | |
---|---|
Born |
Soviet Union |
23 August 1939
Nationality | Israeli |
Fields | Mathematics |
Institutions | Tel Aviv University |
Alma mater | Kharkiv State University |
Doctoral advisor | Boris Levin |
Doctoral students |
Semyon Alesker Shiri Artstein-Avidan Bo'az Klartag Leonid Polterovich |
Vitali Davidovich Milman (Hebrew: ויטלי מילמן; Russian: Виталий Давидович Мильман) (born 23 August 1939) is a mathematician specializing in analysis. He is a professor at the Tel-Aviv University. In the past he was a President of the Israel Mathematical Union and a member of the “Aliyah” committee of Tel-Aviv University.
Milman received his Ph.D. at Kharkiv State University in 1965 under the direction of Boris Levin.
In a 1971 paper, Milman gave a new proof of Dvoretzky's theorem, stating that every convex body in dimension N has a section of dimension d(N), with d(N) tending to infinity with N, that is arbitrarily close to being isometric to an ellipsoid. Milman's proof gives the optimal bound d(N) ≥ const log N. In this proof, Milman put forth the concentration of measure phenomenon which has since found numerous applications.
Milman made important contributions to the study of Banach spaces of large (finite) dimension, which led to the development of asymptotic geometric analysis. His results in this field include Milman's reverse Brunn–Minkowski inequality and the quotient of subspace theorem.
He holds several positions including being the advisor to the Israel Ministry of Science on the immigration of scientists, and being a member of the European Mathematical Union.
He is on the editorial boards of several journals, including Geometric and Functional Analysis. He has published over 150 scientific publications, a monograph and eleven edited books. He has delivered lectures at Universities such as MIT, IAS Princeton, Berkeley, IHES Paris, Cambridge.