George Lusztig

George Lusztig (born Gheorghe Lusztig, May 20, 1946) is a Romanian-born Hungarian-American mathematician and Abdun Nur professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was a Norbert Wiener professor in the Department of Mathematics from 1999 to 2009.

Education and career Born in Timișoara to a Hungarian-Jewish family,

Lusztig worked for almost seven years at the University of Warwick. His involvement at the university encompassed a Research Fellowship, (1971–72); lecturer in Mathematics, (1972–74); and Professor of Mathematics, (1974–78). In 1978, he accepted a chair at MIT.

Contributions He is known for his work on representation theory, in particular for the objects closely related to algebraic groups, such as finite reductive groups, Hecke algebras, -adic groups, quantum groups, and Weyl groups. He essentially paved the way for modern representation theory. This has included fundamental new concepts, including the character sheaves, the Deligne–Lusztig varieties, and the Kazhdan–Lusztig polynomials.

Awards and honors In 1983, Lusztig was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society. and in 2014, he received the Shaw Prize in Mathematics. In 2022, he received the Wolf Prize in Mathematics. In 2024, he received the Gold Medal of the UVT (Western University of Timisoara). In 2025, he received the Basic Science Lifetime Award.