About Maxim Kontsevich
Maxim Lvovich Kontsevich (Russian: Макси́м Льво́вич Конце́вич, IPA: [mɐkˈsʲim ˈlʲvovʲɪtɕ kɐnˈtsɛvʲɪtɕ]; born 25 August 1964) is a Russian and French mathematician and mathematical physicist. He is a professor at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques and a distinguished professor at the University of Miami. He received the Henri Poincaré Prize in 1997, the Fields Medal in 1998, the Crafoord Prize in 2008, the Shaw Prize and Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2012, and the Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics in 2015. == Academic career and research == He was born into the family of Lev Kontsevich, Soviet orientalist and author of the Kontsevich system. After ranking second in the All-Union Mathematics Olympiads, he attended Moscow State University but left without a degree in 1985 to become a researcher at the Institute for Information Transmission Problems in Moscow. While at the institute he published papers that caught the interest of the Max Planck Institute in Bonn and was invited for three months. Just before the end of his time there, he attended a five-day international meeting, the Arbeitstagung, where he sketched a proof of the Witten conjecture to the amazement of Michael Atiyah and other mathematicians and his invitation to the institute was subsequently extended to three years. The next year he finished the proof and worked on various topics on mathematical physics and in 1992 received his Dr. rer. nat.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.