Christopher Hacon
University of Utah
2018 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics
For transformational contributions to birational algebraic geometry, especially to the minimal model program in all dimensions.
Comments
We are extremely honored and humbled to receive the Breakthrough Prize. I would like to thank my teachers and mentors, especially Fabio Bardelli, Fabrizio Catanese, and Robert Lazarsfeld, for introducing me to many beautiful topics in mathematics and for inspiring me to do research in algebraic geometry. We are indebted to our many colleagues and co-authors, especially C. Birkar and P. Cascini, whose work has greatly inspired us. I am also very grateful to the University of Utah, NSF, NSA, Sloan Foundation, Clay Foundation, and Simons Foundation for their generous financial support. It is clear that the results that are being recognized by this prize are the crowning achievements of a long research program to which our co-authors and we have only contributed a small portion. In particular we would like to mention the work of Y. Kawamata, J. Kollár, S. Mori, M. Reid, Y.-T. Siu, and V. Shokurov. We are very grateful to the Breakthrough Prize Committee for choosing to recognize this body of work. I would also like to thank my family for their help, love, and support through the years, especially Aleksandra, Stefan, Ana, Sasha, Kristina, Daniela, and Marko Jovanovic-Hacon as well as Derek Hacon, Carol Peters, and Giovanni Gianelli.
