Dynamical systems theorists

Maryam Mirzakhani (Persian: مریم میرزاخانی‎, 03 May 1977 – 14 July 2017) was an Iranian mathematician and a professor of mathematics at Stanford University. Her research topics included Teichmüller theory, hyperbolic geometry, ergodic theory, and symplectic geometry. In 2005, as a result of her research, she was honored in Popular Science's fourth annual "Brilliant 10" in which she was acknowledged as one of the top 10 young minds who have pushed their fields in innovative directions.

Lai-Sang Lily Young (Chinese: 楊麗笙, born 1952) is a Hong Kong-born American mathematician who holds the Henry & Lucy Moses Professorship of Science and is a professor of mathematics and neural science at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University. Her research interests include dynamical systems, ergodic theory, chaos theory, probability theory, statistical mechanics, and neuroscience. She is particularly known for introducing the method of Markov returns in 1998, which she used to prove exponential correlation delay in Sinai billiards and other hyperbolic dynamical systems.

Ali Hasan Nayfeh (21 December 1933 – 27 March 2017) was a Palestinian-Jordanian mathematician, mechanical engineer and physicist. He is regarded as the most influential scholar and scientist in the area of applied nonlinear dynamics in mechanics and engineering. He was the inaugural winner of the Thomas K. Caughey Dynamics Award, and was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal in mechanical engineering. His pioneering work in nonlinear dynamics has been influential in the construction and maintenance of machines and structures that are common in daily life, such as ships, cranes, bridges, buildings, skyscrapers, jet engines, rocket engines, aircraft and spacecraft.

Jacob Palis Jr. (15 March 1940 – 7 May 2025) was a Brazilian mathematician and professor. Palis's research interests were mainly dynamical systems and differential equations. Some themes are global stability and hyperbolicity, bifurcations, attractors and chaotic systems.

Grigory Aleksandrovich Margulis (Russian: Григо́рий Алекса́ндрович Маргу́лис, first name often given as Gregory, Grigori or Gregori; born February 24, 1946) is a Russian-American mathematician known for his work on lattices in Lie groups, and the introduction of methods from ergodic theory into diophantine approximation. He was awarded a Fields Medal in 1978, a Wolf Prize in Mathematics in 2005, and an Abel Prize in 2020, becoming the fifth mathematician to receive the three prizes. In 1991, he joined the faculty of Yale University, where he is currently the Erastus L. De Forest Professor of Mathematics.

John Willard Milnor (born February 20, 1931) is an American mathematician known for his work in differential topology, K-theory and dynamical systems. Milnor is a distinguished professor at Stony Brook University and one of the six mathematicians to have won the Fields Medal, the Wolf Prize, and the Abel Prize.

Vladimir Igorevich Arnold (alternative spelling Arnol'd, Russian: Влади́мир И́горевич Арно́льд, 12 June 1937 – 3 June 2010) was a Soviet and Russian mathematician. While he is best known for the Kolmogorov–Arnold–Moser theorem regarding the stability of integrable systems, he made important contributions in several areas including dynamical systems theory, algebra, catastrophe theory, topology, algebraic geometry, symplectic geometry, differential equations, classical mechanics, hydrodynamics and singularity theory, including posing the ADE classification problem, since his first main result—the solution of Hilbert's thirteenth problem in 1957 at the age of 19. He co-founded two new branches of mathematics—KAM theory, and topological Galois theory (this, with his student Askold Khovanskii).

Jules Henri Poincaré (, ; 29 April 1854 – 17 July 1912) was a French mathematician, theoretical physicist, engineer, and philosopher of science. He is often described as a polymath, and in mathematics as "The Last Universalist", since he excelled in all fields of the discipline as it existed during his lifetime.

Alex Eskin (born May 19, 1965) is an American mathematician. He is the Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Chicago.

Elon Lindenstrauss (Hebrew: אילון לינדנשטראוס‎, born August 1, 1970) is an Israeli mathematician, and a winner of the 2010 Fields Medal.