Ravi Damodar Vakil | |
|---|---|
 Vakil in 2008 | |
| Born | (1970-02-22)February 22, 1970 (age 55) Etobicoke, Ontario, Canada |
| Education | University of Toronto (BSc,MSc) Harvard University (PhD) |
| Awards | Chauvenet Prize (2014)[1] |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | Stanford University MIT Princeton University |
| Doctoral advisor | Joe Harris |
Ravi D. Vakil (born February 22, 1970) is a Canadian-American mathematician working inalgebraic geometry. He is the current president of theAmerican Mathematical Society.
Vakil was born on February 22, 1970. His father was a professor of preventative medicine at theUniversity of Toronto and his mother was a high school math teacher.[2] He later attended high school atMartingrove Collegiate Institute inEtobicoke, Ontario, where he won several mathematical contests and olympiads.[3] After earning a BSc and MSc from theUniversity of Toronto in 1992, he completed a PhD in mathematics atHarvard University in 1997 underJoe Harris.[4] He has since been an instructor at bothPrinceton University andMIT. Since the fall of 2001, he has taught atStanford University,[5] becoming a full professor in 2007.The Rising Sea: Foundations of Algebraic Geometry, a mathematical textbook about algebraic geometry by Ravi Vakil, was published in 2025, although drafts were available online ever since he began to write it in 2010.[6]
Vakil is analgebraic geometer and his research work spans overenumerative geometry,topology,Gromov–Witten theory, and classical algebraic geometry. He has solved several old problems inSchubert calculus. Among other results, he proved that all Schubert problems are enumerative[7] over thereal numbers, a result that resolves an issue mathematicians have worked on for at least two decades.
Vakil has received many awards, including anNSF CAREER Fellowship, aSloan Research Fellowship, anAmerican Mathematical Society Centennial Fellowship, aG. de B. Robinson prize for the best paper published (2000) in theCanadian Journal of Mathematics and theCanadian Mathematical Bulletin,[8] and the André-Aisenstadt Prize from theCentre de Recherches Mathématiques at theUniversité de Montréal (2005), and theChauvenet Prize[1] (2014).
In 2013 he became a fellow of theAmerican Mathematical Society.[9] Vakil was elected as its president in 2024 and began his two-year term on 1 February 2025.[10]
He was a member of the Canadian team in threeInternational Mathematical Olympiads, winning silver, gold (perfect score), and gold in 1986, 1987, and 1988 respectively. He was also the fourth person to be a four-timePutnam Fellow in the history of the contest. Also, he has been the coordinator of weekly Putnam preparation seminars at Stanford.[11]
