Yakov Josef Alber was born on July 4, 1939, in Krasnoyarsk, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Soviet Union. He is the son of Josef Sindel Alber and Maria Zis (Titievskii) Alber.
After a distinguished scientific career in the Soviet Union, he emigrated to Israel in 1990. Since 2010, he has held dual Israeli and American citizenship. Alber is of Jewish ethnicity.
Alber received a Master of Science degree in Mathematics from Gorky University in 1961. He subsequently earned a Doctor of Philosophy in Mathematics from the same institution in 1968.
In 1988, he was awarded the Doctor of Science degree in Mathematics by the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union in Novosibirsk, one of the highest academic qualifications in the Soviet scientific system.
Alber began his professional career in 1961 as a researcher in the Department of Numerical Analysis and Mathematical Physics at the Radiophysical Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod). From 1965 to 1969 he served as a senior engineer and researcher at the institute.
In 1969, he became a senior researcher and group leader at the Radiophysical Institute, positions he held for two decades. He was appointed leading researcher in 1989 and remained in that role until his move to Israel in 1990.
Alongside his research work, Alber taught as an associate professor at Gorky University from 1969 to 1973. He later served as an associate professor at the Gorky Institute of Civil Engineering from 1986 to 1988. In 1980, he was a visiting professor at the Institute of Mathematics of the Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences in Baku.
Following his relocation to Israel, Alber joined the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa in 1991 as a researcher in the Department of Mathematics.
Throughout his career, his research has focused on nonlinear functional analysis, Banach and Hilbert space theory, fixed point algorithms, variational inequalities, approximation methods, and optimization theory. He has authored numerous scholarly papers in these fields and is recognized for contributions to iterative methods and projection techniques in nonlinear analysis.
Alber has made notable contributions to nonlinear functional analysis and fixed point theory, particularly in the study of variational inequalities, projection methods, and iterative approximation algorithms in Banach and Hilbert spaces.
He was recognized by inclusion in Marquis Who's Who as a noteworthy mathematician.
Alber has been active in several professional mathematical and scientific organizations. He has been a member of the American Mathematical Society and has served as a reviewer for the society since 1977. He is also a member of the Israel Mathematical Union and the New York Academy of Sciences.
Married Tatyana Haim Barkan, March 14, 1961. Children: Alesandr, Vitaly.
