Alexandre Kirillov

Alexandre Aleksandrovich Kirillov (born 9 May 1936 in Moscow) is a Soviet and Russian mathematician known for his work in representation theory, topological groups and Lie groups. In particular he introduced the orbit method into representation theory. He studied at Moscow State University as a student of Israel Gelfand, and his 1962 dissertation on unitary representations of nilpotent Lie groups earned him a doctorate while he was the youngest Doctor of Science in the Soviet Union. He worked at Moscow State University until 1994, when he became the Francis J. Carey Professor of Mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is now emeritus. He is also known as an organizer of Russian mathematical contests and as an author of school-oriented books.