Nikolai Durov

Nikolai Valeryevich Durov (Russian Никола́й Вале́рьевич Ду́ров, English transcription Nikolai Valeryevich Durov; born November 21, 1980 in Leningrad) is a Russian mathematician and programmer.

He is the brother of Pavel Valeryevich Durov and was involved in the development and foundation of Vk.com and Telegram Messenger. He was one of the lead programmers at Vk.com until 2013 and he was significantly involved in the development of Telegram (encryption system MTProto, Telegram Open Network TON). His design for TON calls this a 5th generation blockchain project and also uses advanced methods from mathematical logic (type theory).

Durov won gold medals at the 1996, 1997, and 1998 International Mathematical Olympiads, as well as three silver and one gold medal at the 1995, 1996, 1997, and 1998 International Computer Science Olympiads. He studied at Saint Petersburg State University, where he received his PhD in mathematics in 2005 under Sergei Vostokov (Method of computation of the Galois group of a polynomial with rational coefficients). He then received a second PhD in 2007 from Gerd Faltings at the University of Bonn (New approach to Arakelov geometry). He does research at the Steklov Institute in Saint Petersburg.

As a student, he was part of a team that won the ACM Int. Collegiate Programming Contest in 2000 and 2001 for Saint Petersburg University.

He developed a new algebraic approach to Arakelov geometry (originally by Suren Yuryevich Arakelov ) as a generalisation of the theory of classical rings and schemes, in which versions of tropical geometry and geometry over the body with an element were developed by him in addition to Arakelov geometry.

In his doctoral thesis at St Petersburg he developed a new method of algorithmically determining the Galois group of equations.

He also dealt with Lie algebras and introduced a generalisation of operads, called by him vectoid.