Vasily Iskovskikh

Vasilii (or Vasily) Alekseevich Iskovskikh (Василий Алексеевич Исковских, 1 July 1939, Orenburg Oblast – 4 January 2009, Moscow) was a Russian mathematician, specializing in algebraic geometry.

Education and career Born into a peasant family, Iskovskikh entered in 1958 the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Tashkent State University. In 1963, as an outstanding student, he was invited to become a student at the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of Moscow State University. There he became an active participant in Igor Shafarevich's seminar and, following the recommendation of Yuri Manin, studied birational geometry. After graduating in 1964, Iskovskikh entered the graduate school of the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of Moscow State University and received in 1968 his Candidate of Sciences degree (PhD) under the supervision of Yuri Manin.

Iskovskikh worked from 1968 to 1974 at the Central Economics and Mathematics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and from 1974 to 1977 at the All-Russian Research Institute of Integrated Automation of the Oil and Gas Industry. In the Department of Higher Algebra of Moscow State University's Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics, he was from 1977 to 1987 a senior researcher, from 1987 to 1990 a leading researcher, and from 1990 until his death a professor. In the Department of Number Theory of the Steklov Institute of Mathematics, he did research since 1990 and was appointed a professor in 1992. In 1990 he received his Russian Doctor of Sciences degree (habilitation). In it, an effective method (the "method of maximal singularities") is constructed, which allows one to comprehensively describe birational maps of rationally connected three-dimensional manifolds. The three-dimensional quartic is foundational for modern research in birational geometry.

In 1983 Iskovskikh was an Invited Speaker with talk Algebraic 3-folds with special regard to the problem of rationality at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Warsaw. In 2000 he was awarded the A.A. Markov Prize of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 2002 he was made an Honorary Doctor of the University of Turin. In 2008 he was elected a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

From June 29 to July 3, 2009, the Steklov Institute held an international conference on the geometry of algebraic varieties as a memorial to V. A. Iskovskikh.

Selected publications with Igor Shafarevich: Algebraic Surfaces, In: I. R. Shafarevich (ed.): Algebraic Geometry II, Encyclopedia of Mathematical Sciences, vol. 35, Springer 2013 reprint of 1996 edition, pp. 127–154 (originally published in Russian in 1989) with Yuri Manin: Трехмерные квартики и контрпримеры к проблеме Люрота, Mat. Sbornik, vol. 86, 1971, pp. 140–166 with Yu. G. Prokhorov: Fano Varieties. In A. N. Parshin, I. Shafarevich (eds.): Algebraic Geometry V. Encyclopedia of Mathematical Sciences, Springer, 1999 Fano 3-folds. (Russian), Parts 1 & 2, Mat. USSR Izv., vol. 11, 1977, pp. 485–527, vol. 12, 1978, pp. 469–506; Part 1; Part 2