Aner Shalev (born 24 January 1958) is a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

at the

Einstein Institute of Mathematics The Einstein Institute of Mathematics () is a centre for scientific research in mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, founded in 1925 with the opening of the university. A leading research institute, the institute's faculty has in ...

at the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; he, הַאוּנִיבֶרְסִיטָה הַעִבְרִית בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם) is a public research university based in Jerusalem, Israel. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Dr. Chaim Weiz ...

, and a writer.

Biography

Shalev was born in Kibbutz Kinneret and grew up in Beit Berl. He moved to

Jerusalem Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...

at 18 to study

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

and

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

at the Hebrew University, and since then, excluding some years abroad, he has been living mainly in Jerusalem. Shalev received his Ph.D. in mathematics at the Hebrew University in 1989, summa cum laude. His doctoral thesis was written under the supervision of Professors Amitsur and Mann and dealt with group rings, an area combining

group theory In abstract algebra, group theory studies the algebraic structures known as group (mathematics), groups. The concept of a group is central to abstract algebra: other well-known algebraic structures, such as ring (mathematics), rings, field ...

and

ring theory In algebra, ring theory is the study of rings— algebraic structures in which addition and multiplication are defined and have similar properties to those operations defined for the integers. Ring theory studies the structure of rings, their re ...

. Shalev spent his post-doctoral period at

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

and at the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

, returned to Israel in 1992, when he was hired as a senior lecturer at the Hebrew University. Shalev was appointed

full professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

in 1996, and spent sabbaticals at the Universities of

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, Oxford (

All Souls College All Souls College (official name: College of the Souls of All the Faithful Departed) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Unique to All Souls, all of its members automatically become fellows (i.e., full members of t ...

), and London (

Imperial College Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

). He was also a visiting scholar at other institutes, such as the

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies and ...

, MSRI Berkeley, the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University, and the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholar ...

at Princeton. Shalev is joint editor of the

Israel Journal of Mathematics '' Israel Journal of Mathematics'' is a peer-reviewed mathematics journal published by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Magnes Press). Founded in 1963, as a continuation of the ''Bulletin of the Research Council of Israel'' (Section F), the jou ...

, the Journal of Group Theory, and the

Journal of Algebra ''Journal of Algebra'' (ISSN 0021-8693) is an international mathematical research journal in algebra. An imprint of Academic Press, it is published by Elsevier. ''Journal of Algebra'' was founded by Graham Higman, who was its editor from 1964 to 1 ...

. He gave an invited talk at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Berlin in 1998 and at numerous other mathematical conferences all over the world. Shalev was awarded many grants from various sources, including the ERC Advanced Grant from the European Community (2010–2014). Aner Shalev is married to Donna Shalev, a senior lecturer at the Classics Department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and they have two daughters.

Research

Shalev's main area of research over the years has been Group Theory, and he often uses methods from other disciplines, such as

Lie Algebras In mathematics, a Lie algebra (pronounced ) is a vector space \mathfrak g together with an Binary operation, operation called the Lie bracket, an Alternating multilinear map, alternating bilinear map \mathfrak g \times \mathfrak g \rightarrow ...

and

Probability Probability is the branch of mathematics concerning numerical descriptions of how likely an Event (probability theory), event is to occur, or how likely it is that a proposition is true. The probability of an event is a number between 0 and ...

. He has also worked on Ring Theory, Lie Algebras, and other areas. Shalev has published around 120 mathematical articles in various international journals. The first fruits of Shalev's research solve various problems in Group Rings using a unified method based on dimension subgroups. Subsequently, he worked extensively in p-groups and pro-p groups and was among those who solved the coclass conjectures on the structure of such groups. Likewise Shalev used Lie methods to solve problems on fixed points of automorphisms of p-groups, and studied subgroup growth of profinite and discrete groups.

Probabilistic methods in group theory

From 1995 Shalev developed and applied probabilistic methods to finite groups and (nonabelian) finite simple groups in particular. A formative result in this area shows that almost every pair of elements in a finite simple group generate the group. This result, like many others in the field, were proved by Shalev in collaboration with

Martin Liebeck Martin Liebeck (born 23 September 1954) is a professor of Pure Mathematics at Imperial College London whose research interests include group theory and algebraic combinatorics.Ore conjecture from 1951, according to which every element in a non-cyclic finite simple group is a commutator.

Selected papers

* * * * * * * *

Literary work

Shalev’s approach to writing

Shalev's approach to writing emphasizes language and structure. In all his literary writing he has included formal experimentation.

Opus 1

This is Shalev's first literary work which was published in 1988 in the ‘Library’ series at the Keter publishing house, and edited by the literary scholar and critic Yig’al Schwartz. The manuscript of this book was awarded the Harry Harishon Prize under the auspices of the Hebrew University, in 1986. This is a collection of four stories with a musical superstructure in which Shalev attempts to apply musical terms and concepts to language and to emotions. The book is composed of two major parts: the first part, "Legato", is characterized by a flowing mode, long sentences without much punctuation and psychologically conveys a state of openness, whereas the second part, "Staccato", is characterized by short sentences, copious punctuation and an introspective, closed mood. The first of the four stories, ‘Opus 1’, describes a boy who falls in love with his piano teacher. The second story, ‘Concussion’, portrays a relationship between two young people, and opens with an injury, providing the characters with a new perspective. The third story, ‘Scherzo’, deals with the journey to New York of an eccentric harpsichord player. The fourth story, ‘Absence’, describes the release from the army on psychiatric grounds of an AWOL interested in being the object of a search party. This story is formally structured as a crossword puzzle with two coordinates and has been described as ‘a crossword riddled with contradictions demanding solutions’.

Overtures

Shalev's second book was published in 1996 in the ‘New Library’ series (Siman Kri'a – ha-Kibbutz ha-Me'uhad) edited by Menachem Peri. The book is composed of seventy openings of stories. The book bears a major element of fragmentation and gaps, and treats openings, or overtures, in the widest sense of the term; at times the stories have an opening and no ending; at others there is only a middle part and the beginning and ending are missing. On the one hand Shalev creates an intense mode of writing, featuring a video-clip nature, and on the other hand he seduces the readers toward filling in the gaps by themselves. Large parts of the book describe many places in the world where people arrive for short, breathless periods and are constantly on the go.

Dark Matter

Shalev's third book is a novel that was published in 2004 at the Zmora Bitan publishing house. It has appeared in German (2007), Italian (2007) and Czech (2009). The book describes a love triangle between a man and two women. Shalev was influenced in this book by the modern astrophysical theory of Dark Matter and Dark Energy; he applies these ideas to relationships between women and men. Alongside physical attraction between men and women, Shalev describes forces of repulsion, which overwhelmingly overcome the forces of attraction. This is an attempt to understand why many love stories which begin so well end so badly. The protagonist of the book is a married Israeli diplomat in New York who, during a visit to Israel, falls in love with a woman doing a doctorate in Physics on Dark Matter. The text is formally divided between emails sent by the woman to the man in the period before their tryst in New York, and descriptions from the man's perspective of that tryst. As the plot progresses the emails asymptotically approach in time the meeting in New York and illuminate its background, but these two types of text and narrative never coalesce.

References

External links

Aner Shalev in The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature

Aner Shalev in Mathematics Genealogy Project
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shalev, Aner 20th-century Israeli mathematicians 21st-century Israeli mathematicians Einstein Institute of Mathematics alumni Academic staff of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Israeli Jews Israeli mathematicians Jewish scientists Living people Jewish novelists Israeli novelists 1958 births