Dennis Gaitsgory receives the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics, endowed with 3 million US dollars "for foundational works and numerous breakthrough contributions to the geometric Langlands program and its quantum version; in particular, the development of the derived algebraic geometry approach and the proof of the geometric Langlands conjecture in characteristic 0".
Dennis Gaitsgory is a director at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn.
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Dennis Gaitsgory has dedicated the past 30 years to proving the geometric Langlands conjecture. Over the decades, he and his collaborators have built an extensive body of work, forming the foundation of the new proof.
Although the geometric Langlands program is highly abstract, it has far-reaching implications for physics, mathematics, and potentially even practical technologies. It forges deep connections between different mathematical structures and has the potential to drive breakthroughs in theoretical physics, number theory, and even quantum computing.
Dennis Gaitsgory completed his studies at Tel Aviv University before earning his doctorate in 1997 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under Joseph Bernstein. He then held a visiting position in Princeton, USA, followed by roles as a Clay Research Fellow and a professor at the University of Chicago. In 2005, he joined Harvard University as a professor. In 2021, the Max Planck Society appointed him as a Scientific Member and Director at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn.
The Breakthrough Prize was established in 2012 by Sergey Brin (Google), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), and others to recognize outstanding researchers for their groundbreaking discoveries. It is awarded in the fields of life sciences, physics, and mathematics.
In 2016, the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences was awarded to Svante Pääbo from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, and in 2022, to Anthony Hyman from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden.
