22 Facts About Yakov Sinai

Yakov Sinai contributed to the modern metric theory of dynamical systems and connected the world of deterministic systems with the world of probabilistic systems.

Yakov Sinai has worked on mathematical physics and probability theory.

Yakov Sinai's efforts have provided the groundwork for advances in the physical sciences.

Yakov Sinai serves as the professor of mathematics at Princeton University since 1993 and holds the position of Senior Researcher at the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics in Moscow, Russia.

Yakov Grigorevich Sinai was born into a Russian Jewish academic family on September 21,1935, in Moscow, Soviet Union.

Yakov Sinai's grandfather, Veniamin Kagan, headed the Department of Differential Geometry at Moscow State University and was a major influence on Sinai's life.

Yakov Sinai received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Moscow State University.

In 1963, Yakov Sinai introduced the idea of dynamical billiards, known as "Yakov Sinai Billiards".

Yakov Sinai then proved that for most initial trajectories of the ball, this system is ergodic, that is, after a long time, the amount of that time the ball will have spent in any given region on the surface of the table is approximately proportional to the area of that region.

Also in 1963, Yakov Sinai announced a proof of the ergodic hypothesis for a gas consisting of n hard spheres confined to a box.

The complete proof was never published, and in 1987 Yakov Sinai declared that the announcement was premature.

From 1960 to 1971, Yakov Sinai was a researcher in the Laboratory of Probabilistic and Statistical Methods at Moscow State University.

Yakov Sinai had to wait until 1981 to become a professor at Moscow State, likely because he had supported the dissident poet, mathematician and human rights activist Alexander Esenin-Volpin in 1968.

Since 1993, Yakov Sinai has been a professor of mathematics at Princeton University, while maintaining his position at the Landau Institute.

In 2002, Yakov Sinai won the Nemmers Prize for his "revolutionizing" work on dynamical systems, statistical mechanics, probability theory, and statistical physics.

In 2013, Sinai received the Leroy P Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement.

Yakov Sinai was inducted into the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

Yakov Sinai is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Yakov Sinai is an honorary member of the London Mathematical Society and, in 2012, he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.

Yakov Sinai has been selected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Brazilian Academy of Sciences, the Academia Europaea, the Polish Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Society of London.

Yakov Sinai holds honorary degrees from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Warwick University, and Warsaw University.

Yakov Sinai has spoken at the International Congress of Mathematicians four times.