What organization did Vladimir Drinfeld join in 2008?
Vladimir Drinfeld Vladimir Gershonovich Drinfeld ( ; ; born February 14 , 1954 ) , surname also romanized as Drinfeld , is a renowned mathematician from the former USSR , who emigrated to the United States and is currently working at the University of Chicago . Drinfelds work connected algebraic geometry over finite fields with number theory , especially the theory of automorphic forms , through the notions of elliptic module and the theory of the geometric Langlands correspondence . Drinfeld introduced the notion of a quantum group ( independently discovered by Michio Jimbo at the same time ) and made important contributions to mathematical physics , including the ADHM construction of instantons , algebraic formalism of the quantum inverse scattering method , and the Drinfeld–Sokolov reduction in the theory of solitons . He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1990 . In 2016 , he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences . In 2018 he received the Wolf Prize in Mathematics . Biography . Drinfeld was born into a Jewish mathematical family , in Kharkiv , Ukrainian SSR , Soviet Union in 1954 . In 1969 , at the age of 15 , Drinfeld represented the Soviet Union at the International Mathematics Olympiad in Bucharest , Romania , and won a gold medal with the full score of 40 points . He was , at the time , the youngest participant to achieve a perfect score , a record that has since been surpassed by only three others including Sergei Konyagin and Noam Elkies . Drinfeld entered Moscow State University in the same year and graduated from it in 1974 . Drinfeld was awarded the Candidate of Sciences degree in 1978 and the Doctor of Sciences degree from the Steklov Institute of Mathematics in 1988 . He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1990 . From 1981 till 1999 he worked at the Verkin Institute for Low Temperature Physics and Engineering ( Department of Mathematical Physics ) . Drinfeld moved to the United States in 1999 and has been working at the University of Chicago since January 1999 . Contributions to mathematics . In 1974 , at the age of twenty , Drinfeld announced a proof of the Langlands conjectures for GL over a global field of positive characteristic . In the course of proving the conjectures , Drinfeld introduced a new class of objects that he called elliptic modules ( now known as Drinfeld modules ) . Later , in 1983 , Drinfeld published a short article that expanded the scope of the Langlands conjectures . The Langlands conjectures , when published in 1967 , could be seen as a sort of non-abelian class field theory . It postulated the existence of a natural one-to-one correspondence between Galois representations and some automorphic forms . The naturalness is guaranteed by the essential coincidence of L-functions . However , this condition is purely arithmetic and cannot be considered for a general one-dimensional function field in a straightforward way . Drinfeld pointed out that instead of automorphic forms one can consider automorphic perverse sheaves or automorphic D-modules . Automorphicity of these modules and the Langlands correspondence could be then understood in terms of the action of Hecke operators . Drinfeld has also done much work in mathematical physics . In collaboration with his advisor Yuri Manin , he constructed the moduli space of Yang–Mills instantons , a result that was proved independently by Michael Atiyah and Nigel Hitchin . Drinfeld coined the term quantum group in reference to Hopf algebras that are deformations of simple Lie algebras , and connected them to the study of the Yang–Baxter equation , which is a necessary condition for the solvability of statistical mechanical models . He also generalized Hopf algebras to quasi-Hopf algebras and introduced the study of Drinfeld twists , which can be used to factorize the R-matrix corresponding to the solution of the Yang–Baxter equation associated with a quasitriangular Hopf algebra . Drinfeld has also collaborated with Alexander Beilinson to rebuild the theory of vertex algebras in a coordinate-free form , which have become increasingly important to two-dimensional conformal field theory , string theory , and the geometric Langlands program . Drinfeld and Beilinson published their work in 2004 in a book titled Chiral Algebras .