Education
Kac studied mathematics at Moscow State University, receiving his Master of Surgery in 1965 and his Doctor of Philosophy in 1968.
Kac studied mathematics at Moscow State University, receiving his Master of Surgery in 1965 and his Doctor of Philosophy in 1968.
He discovered Kac–Moody algebras, and used the Weyl–Kac character formula for them to reprove the Macdonald identities. He classified the finite-dimensional simple Lie superalgebras, and found the Kac determinant formula for the Virasoro algebra. He is also known for the Kac-Weisfeiler conjectures with Boris Weisfeiler.
From 1968 to 1976, he held a teaching position at the Moscow Institute of Electronic Machine Building.
He left the Soviet Union in 1977, becoming an associate professor of mathematics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1981, he was promoted to full professor In 1978 he was an Invited Speaker (Highest weight representations of infinite dimensional Lie algebras) at the ICM in Helsinki, In 1988 a plenary speaker at the American Mathematical Society centennial conference.
In 2002 he gave a plenary lecture (Classification of Supersymmetries) at the ICM in Beijing. The research of Victor Kac primarily concerns representation theory and mathematical physics.
His work has been very influential in mathematics and physics and instrumental in the development of quantum field theory, string theory and the theory of integrable systems
Kac published 5 books and over 200 articles in mathematics and physics journals and is listed as an Inter-Services Intelligence highly cited researcher
Kac, Victor G. (2013). Bombay Lectures on Highest Weight Representations of Infinite Dimensional Lie Algebras (2nd ed). World Scientific Publishing.
. Kac, Victor G. (1994). Infinite-Dimensional Lie Algebras (3rd ed). Cambridge University Press.
. Kac, Victor (1997). Vertex Algebras for Beginners (University Lecture Series, No 10). American Mathematical Society.
American Mathematical Society. American Academy of Arts and Sciences.