Yurii Nesterov
Research Professor, Corvinus Centre for Operations Research, Corvinus University of Budapest
Emeritus Professor, Catholic University of Louvain
Prof. Yurii Nesterov is a Research Professor at the Corvinus Centre for Operations Research (CCOR) at Corvinus University of Budapest and an Emeritus Professor at the Catholic University of Louvain (UCLouvain) in Belgium. He is an internationally recognised expert in convex optimization, particularly in the development of efficient algorithms and numerical optimisation analysis. His primary research areas include convex optimisation, applied mathematics, mathematical optimisation, and rate of convergence.
Professor Nesterov is widely recognised as the inventor of the Fast Gradient Method (1983) and the developer of Lexicographic Differentiation (1985). He is one of the creators of the modern theory of polynomial-time interior-point methods for structural convex optimisation problems. In collaboration with Arkadi Nemirovski, he introduced the theory of self-concordant functions, unifying global complexity results for convex optimisation problems, including linear, second-order cone, and semidefinite programming. His subsequent contributions include the development of the Smoothing Technique (2005) and the promotion of higher-order methods (2019). These advances have extended the capabilities of optimisation methods beyond the limits prescribed by complexity theory.
He was elected a member of Academia Europaea in 2021 and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2022.