Yakov Eliashberg is a Russian

Russians

The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....

 mathematician

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....

. He received his Ph.D. from Leningrad University in 1972 under the direction of Vladimir Rokhlin. From 1972 to 1979 he taught at the Syktyvkar State University

Syktyvkar State University

Syktyvkar State University is the principal university in Syktyvkar, the capital of the Komi Republic in Russia. It was founded in 1972 and has over 3,500 full-time students and 250 faculty members....

 of Komi Republic

Komi Republic

The Komi Republic is a federal subject of Russia .-Geography:The republic is situated to the west of the Ural mountains, in the north-east of the East European Plain...

 of Russia and from 1980 to 1987 worked in industry as the head of a computer software group. In 1988 Eliashberg moved to the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, and since 1989 he has been a professor of mathematics at Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

. Eliashberg received the Leningrad Mathematical Society Prize in 1972. In 1986 and in 1998 he was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians

International Congress of Mathematicians

The International Congress of Mathematicians is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union ....

. He delivered the Porter Lectures at Rice University

Rice University

William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University or Rice, is a private research university located on a heavily wooded campus in Houston, Texas, United States...

 (1992), the Rademacher Lectures at the University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

 (1996), the Marston Morse Lectures at the Institute for Advanced Study

Institute for Advanced Study

The Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States, is an independent postgraduate center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It was founded in 1930 by Abraham Flexner...

 (1996), the Frontiers in Mathematics Lectures at Texas A&M University

Texas A&M University

Texas A&M University is a coeducational public research university located in College Station, Texas . It is the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System. The sixth-largest university in the United States, A&M's enrollment for Fall 2011 was over 50,000 for the first time in school...

 (1997), and the Marker Lectures at Pennsylvania State University

Pennsylvania State University

The Pennsylvania State University, commonly referred to as Penn State or PSU, is a public research university with campuses and facilities throughout the state of Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1855, the university has a threefold mission of teaching, research, and public service...

 (2000). In 1995 Eliashberg was a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship

Guggenheim Fellowship

Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...

.

Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry

In 2001 he was awarded the Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry

Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry

The Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry is an award granted by the American Mathematical Society for notable research in geometry or topology. It was founded in 1961 in memory of Oswald Veblen...

 from the AMS

American Mathematical Society

The American Mathematical Society is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, which it does with various publications and conferences as well as annual monetary awards and prizes to mathematicians.The society is one of the...

 for his work in symplectic

Symplectic topology

Symplectic geometry is a branch of differential geometry and differential topology which studies symplectic manifolds; that is, differentiable manifolds equipped with a closed, nondegenerate 2-form...

 and contact topology. In particular for his proof of the symplectic rigidity and the development of 3-dimensional contact topology.