Photo: Gert Martin Greuel / CC BY-SA 2.0 de (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Efim Zelmanov belongs to a rarer kind of celebrity, the sort who quietly rewrites what humanity knows. Born in Khabarovsk and trained at Novosibirsk State University, he climbed from the Russian Far East to the very summit of mathematics, winning a Fields Medal in 1994 for resolving the restricted Burnside problem, a question that had confounded the field for decades. The string of honorary doctorates that followed feels almost incidental next to that achievement. I am not a mathematician, but I do not need to follow the proof to feel awe. Minds that bend abstraction into truth deserve every bit of our respect.
Overview
Efim Isaakovich Zelmanov (Russian: Ефи́м Исаа́кович Зе́льманов; born 7 September 1955) is a Russian-American mathematician, known for his work on combinatorial problems in nonassociative algebra and group theory, including his solution of the restricted Burnside problem. He was awarded a Fields Medal at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Zürich in 1994.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Efim Zelmanov
- Name (Japanese)
- エフィム・ゼルマノフ
- Reading
- えふぃむ・ぜるまのふ
- Born
- September 7, 1955 (age 70)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Virgo / Goat
- Origin
- Khabarovsk, Russia
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- mathematician / university teacher
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Private
- University
- Novosibirsk State University
Awards & achievements
- 1994 Fields medal
- honorary doctorate from the University of Alberta
- honorary doctorate of the University of Oviedo
- honorary doctor of the University of Chile
- 2019 honorary doctor of the University of Haute-Alsace
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
5. Works & records
| Category | Title | Role | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Notable work | Burnside's problem | — |
6. Links
Mathematician — see all → · University teacher — see all → · More people from Russia →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-02
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.