On 2 October 2026, Prof. David Kazhdan and Prof. Joseph Bernstein were announced as the joint recipients of the 2026 Wolf Prize in Mathematics, one of Israel's most prestigious international prizes for scientific achievement. The award recognised their foundational work in representation theory, automorphic forms and algebraic geometry, and their role in creating the field of geometric representation theory.
Both mathematicians were born in Moscow — Kazhdan in 1946 and Bernstein in 1945 — and both went on to build distinguished international careers before making Israel their academic home. Kazhdan is a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Bernstein is Professor Emeritus at Tel Aviv University. Bernstein also spent ten years as a professor of mathematics at Harvard University.
Their work deals with some of the most abstract areas of modern mathematics, but its importance lies in the connections it has created between different branches of the subject. The Wolf Foundation describes their ideas as having created new bridges between algebra, geometry and analysis, helping to establish geometric representation theory as a major field of modern mathematics.
There is also a particularly Israeli dimension to both stories. Bernstein moved to Israel in 1993 and joined Tel Aviv University, where he remained a faculty member until becoming Professor Emeritus in 2014. Kazhdan moved to Israel in 2002 and joined the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Both are members of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
This year's Wolf Prize is therefore a fitting recognition not only of two extraordinary mathematical careers, but of two scientists whose work has helped shape an important area of mathematics — and who have made Israel an important part of that story.