Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro
He became interested in mathematics at the age of 10, struck, as he wrote in his short memoir, "by the charm and unusual beauty of negative numbers", which his father, a PhD in chemical engineering, showed him.His contact with Shafarevich, who was a professor at the Steklov Institute, broadened Piatetski-Shapiro's mathematical outlook and directed his attention to modern number theory and algebraic geometry.In 1966, Piatetski-Shapiro was again invited to the ICM in Moscow [7] where he presented a 1-hour lecture on Automorphic Functions and arithmetic groups (Автоморфные функции и арифметические группы).Ilya gave his famous answer: “The membership in the Communist Party will distract me from my work.” During the span of his career Piatetski-Shapiro was influenced greatly by Israel Gelfand.[citation needed] Piatetski-Shapiro lost his part-time position at mathematics department of Moscow State University in 1973, after he signed a letter asking Soviet authorities to release a dissident mathematician Alexander Esenin-Volpin from a mental institution.[citation needed] After his ex-wife and son left the Soviet Union in 1974, Piatetski-Shapiro also applied for an exit visa to Israel and was refused.[citation needed] As a prominent refusenik with connections to an international scientific community, Piatetski-Shapiro was followed around by a KGB car and his apartment was under electronic surveillance.[citation needed] In 1976, a presentation was made to the Council of the National Academy of Sciences urging the use of their good offices to get Piatetski-Shapiro an exit visa.One of his major works at Yale dealt with the converse theorem which establishes a link between automorphic forms on n by n matrix groups and zeta functions.