FURSTENBERG, HILLEL

FURSTENBERG, HILLEL (Harry) (1935– ), lsraeli mathematician. Furstenberg was born in Berlin but immigrated to the United States and studied at Yeshiva University, New York, obtaining both his B.A. and his M.Sc. in 1955, and his doctorate from Princeton in 1958. In the same year he was appointed instructor at Princeton and at MIT from 1959 to 1961; assistant professor at the University of Minnesota (1961–63); and full professor (1964–65). He relocated to Israel in 1965 on his appointment as professor of mathematics at the Hebrew University. Furstenberg works in the area of probability theory and dynamics and their applications to combinatorics and group theory. He was awarded the Rothschild Prize in 1978 and the Israel and Harvey Prizes in 1993. He is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.