Rahul Pandharipande

Who is Rahul Pandharipande?

Rahul Pandharipande is an Indian-American mathematician at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich working in algebraic geometry. His particular interests concern the moduli of curves, Gromov–Witten theory, and the moduli of sheaves.

He received his A.B. from Princeton University in 1990 and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1994. His advisor at Harvard was Joe Harris. After teaching at the University of Chicago and the California Institute of Technology, he joined the faculty as Professor of Mathematics at Princeton in 2002. In 2011, he accepted a Professorship at ETH Zürich.

He frequently collaborates with Fields medalist Andrei Okounkov. He received the Clay Research Award in 2013.

The Infosys Prize 2013 in Mathematical Sciences was awarded to Rahul Pandharipande for his profound work in algebraic geometry. In particular, for his work on Gromov–Witten theory for Riemann surfaces, for predicting the connection between Gromov–Witten and Donaldson‑Thomas theories, and for his recent work with Aaron Pixton that establishes this connection for Calabi–Yau 3-folds.

His father Vijay Raghunath Pandharipande was a renowned theoretical physicist who worked in the area of nuclear physics.