Stefan Nemirovski - Lorentz geometry and contact topology

Roger Penrose observed four decades ago that the space of light rays of a reasonable spacetime carries a natural contact structure and raised the problem of describing the causality relation of the spacetime in its terms. At about the same time, Daniel Bennequin and Yakov Eliashberg discovered the global rigidity properties of contact manifolds. This has ultimately led to a solution of Penrose's problem - and to further open questions.
Stefan Nemirovski is a Russian mathematician. He is a principal researcher at the Steklov Mathematical Institute in Moscow and a Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Nemirovski was awarded an EMS Prize in 2000 for his contributions to complex analysis in several variables. He was elected corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2008.