Dror Bar-Natan is a Professor at the University of Toronto Department of Mathematics, Canada.
Education
Bar-Natan earned his Bachelor of Science in mathematics at Tel Aviv University in 1984. After performing his military service as a teacher, he went to study at Princeton University in 1987. He obtained his Doctor of Philosophy in mathematics from Princeton in 1991, under the direction of physicist Edward Witten.
Career
His main research interests include knot theory, finite type invariants, and Khovanov homology. After holding a Benjamin Peirce Assistant at Harvard University for four years from 1991-1995, he returned to Israel, and became Associate Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He moved to the University of Toronto in 2002, and was promoted to Full Professor in 2006.
In 1999, Bar-Natan collaborated on a paper with the goal of mathematically refuting claims made in The Bible Code by Michael Drosnin that hidden messages could be deciphered from within the bible.
In particular, he demonstrated that practically any "code" could be found within the Bible, thereby debunking Drosnin"s "discovery" of specific codes. This work is outside the main scope of his academic interests, although he is known for it because of the popularity of The Bible Code.
Academically, Bar-Natan has made significant contributions to the formalization of Khovanov homology.
Membership
Bar-Natan is a member of the Editorial Board for the journal Compositio Mathematica.