Sorin Popa

Sorin Teodor Popa
Born	(1953-03-24) 24 March 1953 (age 72) Bucharest, Romanian People's Republic
Alma mater	University of Bucharest
Known for	Von Neumann algebras, subfactors, ergodic theory
Awards	Guggenheim Fellow (1995) Ostrowski Prize (2009) Moore Prize (2010)
Scientific career
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	University of California, Los Angeles
Thesis	Studiul unor clase de subalgebre ale ${\displaystyle C^{*}}$-algebrelor  (1983)
Doctoral advisor	Dan-Virgil Voiculescu
Doctoral students	Adrian Ioana
Website	www.math.ucla.edu/~popa

Sorin Teodor Popa (born 24 March 1953) is a Romanian American mathematician working on operator algebras. He is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. ^[1] He was elected a Member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2025. ^[2]

Biography

Popa earned his PhD from the University of Bucharest in 1983 under the supervision of Dan-Virgil Voiculescu, with thesis Studiul unor clase de subalgebre ale ${\displaystyle C^{*}}$-algebrelor. ^{[1] [3]} He has advised 15 doctoral students at UCLA, including Adrian Ioana. ^[3]

Honors and awards

In 1990, Popa was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Kyoto, where he gave a talk on "Subfactors and Classifications in von Neumann algebras". He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1995. ^[4] In 2006, he gave a plenary lecture at the ICM in Madrid on "Deformation and Rigidity for group actions and Von Neumann Algebras". ^[5] In 2009, he was awarded the Ostrowski Prize, ^[1] and in 2010 the E. H. Moore Prize. ^[6] He is one of the inaugural fellows of the American Mathematical Society. ^[7] In 2013, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In the Spring of 2025 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. ^[8]

Selected publications

• Pimsner, Mihai; Popa, Sorin (1986). "Entropy and index for subfactors". Annales Scientifiques de l'École Normale Supérieure . 19 (1): 57–106. doi: 10.24033/asens.1504 . MR   0860811.
• Popa, Sorin (1994). "Classification of amenable subfactors of type II". Acta Mathematica . 172 (2): 163–255. doi: 10.1007/BF02392646 . MR   1278111. S2CID   123256227.
• Popa, Sorin (1995). Classification of subfactors and their endomorphisms. CBMS Regional Conference Series in Mathematics. Vol. 86. Providence, Rhode Island: American Mathematical Society. doi:10.1090/cbms/086. ISBN   978-0-8218-0321-9. MR   1339767.
• Popa, Sorin (2006). "On a class of type II 1 factors with Betti numbers invariants". Annals of Mathematics . 163 (3): 809–899. arXiv: math/0209130 . doi: 10.4007/annals.2006.163.809 . MR   2215135. S2CID   119174749.
• Popa, Sorin (2008). "On the superrigidity of malleable actions with spectral gap". Journal of the American Mathematical Society . 21 (4): 981–1000. arXiv: math/0608429 . Bibcode:2008JAMS...21..981P. doi: 10.1090/S0894-0347-07-00578-4 . MR   2425177. S2CID   1298719.

References

1. "Popa Receives Ostrowski Prize" (PDF). Notices of the American Mathematical Society.
2. "National Academy of Sciences Elects Members and International Members". www.nasonline.org. April 29, 2025. Retrieved May 6, 2025.
3. Sorin Popa at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
4. "Sorin Popa". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
5. "International Mathematical Union – Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians, August 21–29, 1990, Kyoto, Japan" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on May 24, 2015.
6. "Browse Prizes and Awards". American Mathematical Society.
7. "Fellows of the American Mathematical Society". American Mathematical Society.
8. Farin, Zenith (1 May 2025). "Professor Sorin Popa Elected to National Academy of Sciences". UCLA Mathematics. Retrieved 6 July 2025.

External links

• Homepage of Sorin Popa at the University of California, Los Angeles
• UCLA – Sorin Popa elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences