Caucher Birkar

Tsinghua University

Caucher Birkar is a Kurdish-British mathematician and professor at the Yau Mathematical Sciences Center of Tsinghua University, awarded the Fields Medal in 2018 for his transformative contributions to birational geometry. Born Fereydoun Derakhshani in Marivan in the Kurdish region of Iran, he studied at the University of Tehran before completing his doctorate at the University of Nottingham and building his career at the University of Cambridge, later moving to Tsinghua. Birkar is best known for proving the Borisov-Alexeev-Borisov (BAB) conjecture, establishing the boundedness of Fano varieties with mild singularities, a deep structural result about the building blocks of algebraic varieties, and for fundamental advances in the minimal model program, including results on the existence of flips and the finite generation of canonical rings in collaboration with Cascini, Hacon, and McKernan. These results sit at the heart of the modern classification theory of higher-dimensional algebraic varieties, organizing how complex geometric shapes can be simplified and compared. His earlier work also earned the Leverhulme Prize and the Moore Prize. Birkar's story, from a refugee seeking asylum in Britain to one of the world's most decorated geometers, has made him an emblem of mathematical excellence, and his work remains foundational reference material for algebraic-geometry research programs worldwide.