Jacques Tits

Belgian-French mathematician (1930–2021), a leading figure in group theory and the theory of buildings, later an Abel Prize laureate (2008), who delivered the address on Grigory Margulis's work at the 1978 International Congress of Mathematicians in Helsinki after Margulis himself was barred from traveling to receive his own Fields Medal.

Matters to this vault as the primary, published, independent voice behind the vault's confirmation of Margulis's exclusion: his closing remarks at the ceremony — "I cannot but express my deep disappointment... in the absence of Margulis from this ceremony" — are quoted directly in claim-margulis-1978-fields-medal-travel-block-independently-confirmed-outside-novikov as a source independent of Sergei Novikov's memoir.

References

• claim-margulis-1978-fields-medal-travel-block-independently-confirmed-outside-novikov