Yakov G. Sinai - Biography

Biography

Sinai was born in Moscow, Soviet Union (now Russia) into a family that played a prominent role in Russia's scientific and cultural life since the 19th century. His grandfather Veniamin Kagan was a Russian geometer, and Sinai's parents were prominent researchers in the medical and biological sciences.

Yakov Sinai received his Ph.D. from Moscow State University in 1960; his advisor was Andrey Kolmogorov. In 1971 he became a Professor at Moscow State University and a senior researcher at the Landau Institute of Theoretical Physics. Since 1993 he has been a Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University.

Sinai is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, Russian Academy of Sciences and others. Among his awards are the Boltzmann Medal (1986), Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics (1990), Dirac Medal (1992), the Wolf Prize in Mathematics (1997), Nemmers Prize (2002), and the Henri Poincaré Prize (2009). Sinai has worked, among other topics, on Kolmogorov–Sinai entropy, Sinai Billiards, Sinai's random walk, Sinai–Ruelle–Bowen measures, Pirogov–Sinai theory.

Sinai is highly respected in the physics and mathematics communities, where the Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy, Sinai's billiards, Sinai's random walk, Sinai-Ruelle-Bowen measures, Pirogov-Sinai theory, as well as his other achievements are considered principal notions that shaped the understanding of many fundamental physical phenomena.