David Ben-Zvi

David Ben-Zvi is the University Chair in Mathematics, specializing in geometric representation theory. He earned a bachelor's degree from Princeton University in 1994 and a doctorate from Harvard University in 1999 under the supervision of Edward Frenkel.

Before joining UT Austin in 2003, Ben-Zvi held postdoctoral positions at the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley. His research explores the geometric and categorical aspects of representation theory, including connections to the Langlands program, topological quantum field theory, and derived algebraic geometry. 

Ben-Zvi was named a fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2012. In recognition of his contributions to teaching, he has received the President’s Associates Centennial Teaching Fellowship in Mathematics at UT Austin.

David Ben-Zvi seeks to apply the perspective of geometry to provide a conceptual and unified understanding for phenomena in algebra and physics. His research program may be summarized as the reconception of central topics in representation theory through the unexpectedly powerful and clear lens of quantum gauge theory. This vision extends the longstanding paradigm for representation theory provided by quantum mechanics (commonly referred to as the Orbit Method or geometric quantization) by incorporating the rich algebraic structures and striking dualities of quantum field theory. A gauge theory can be viewed as a highly organized machine which inputs low-dimensional manifolds and outputs representation-theoretic invariants. Thus, a duality between gauge theories encodes a large family of tightly interconnected statements. The focal point of Ben-Zvi's work is uniting two landmark dualities of math and physics: first, the Langlands program linking representation theory and Galois theory, and second, the electric-magnetic duality of supersymmetric gauge theories.