Yakov Grigorevich Sinai is one of the most influential mathematicians of the twentieth century. He obtained numerous groundbreaking results in the theory of dynamical systems, in mathematical physics and in probability theory. Especially his ingenious insights and pioneering works practically shaped the modern metric theory of dynamical systems (also often called after Kolmogorov the theory of stochasticity of dynamical systems). Sinai was the major architect of the bridges connecting the world of deterministic (dynamical) systems with the world of probabilistic (stochastic) systems.

Recent awards include:

2008 Lagrange Prize, given by ISI Institute, Torino, Italy

2008 Election to the Academia Europaea

2009 Election to the Royal Society of London

2009 Henri Poincare Prize given by the International Association of Mathematical Physics

2009 Dobrushin International Prize given by the Institute of Information Transmission, Russian Academy of Sciences

2002 Nemmers Prize

1997 Wolf Prize

Speakers in the Distinguished Lecture Series (DLS) have made outstanding contributions to their field of mathematics. The DLS consists of a series of three one-hour lectures.