Fields medallist Vladimir Voevodsky new honorary doctor at the IT Faculty
Vladimir Voevodsky has been appointed honorary doctor at the IT Faculty for his excellence in the field of mathematics and computer assisted mathematical reasoning, where he works closely with researchers in Gothenburg.
Vladimir Voevodsky at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, is a world leading mathematician working in the area of algebraic geometry and algebraic topology. In 2002, he received the Fields Medal for several groundbreaking results.
During the last decade Voevodsky has worked on computer verification of mathematical proofs. For this purpose he used "proof assistants" of the kind that has been developed at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Gothenburg. Proof assistants are computer programs that help mathematicians to build correct proofs.
Voevodsky also discovered an interesting correspondence between homotopy theory, one of his own specialities in mathematics, and the version of type theory that the proof assistants is based on. The discovery of the correspondence has led to improvements in both type theory as such and the ability to carry out verification of mathematical proofs. In recent years Voevodsky has collaborated with researchers from Gothenburg in further developing the correspondence he discovered.
Photo: Klaus Tschira Stiftung/ Peter Badge