Caucher Birkar

Caucher Birkar (Kurdish: کۆچەر بیرکار, romanized: Koçer Bîrkar, lit. 'migrant mathematician'; born Fereydoun Derakhshani (Kurdish: فەرەیدوون درەخشانی، Persian: فریدون درخشانی); July 1978) is a UK-based Iranian Kurdish and British mathematician (born in Iran) and a professor at Tsinghua University. He is also an Honorary Professor at the University of Nottingham. Birkar is an important contributor to modern birational geometry. In 2010 he received the Leverhulme Prize in mathematics and statistics for his contributions to algebraic geometry, and in 2016, shared the AMS Moore Prize for the article "Existence of minimal models for varieties of log general type". He was awarded the Fields Medal in 2018, "for his proof of boundedness of Fano varieties and contributions to the minimal model program". In his office at the university, Birkar has two photographs of Alexander Grothendieck, his favorite mathematician, who like Birkar, was a refugee and Fields medalist. Birkar maintains strong ties to his Kurdish heritage and actively encourages Kurdish identity while also separating it from nationalism and politics. According to Birkar, his strong Kurdish identity is not a part of nationalism nor politics and he is not striving for such achievements. This can be a reflection of his name change to Caucher Birkar which roughly translates into ”the Migrating Mathematician”.