Dror Bar-Natan

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Dror Bar-Natan (Hebrew: דרוֹר בָר-נָתָן‎; born January 30, 1966, Israel) is a mathematics professor at the University of Toronto, Canada. His main research interests include knot theory, finite type invariants, and Khovanov homology.

Bar-Natan earned his B.Sc. in mathematics at Tel Aviv University in 1984. After performing his military service as a teacher, he came in 1987 to study in the United States, at Princeton University. He obtained his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1991, under the direction of physicist Edward Witten. After holding a Benjamin Peirce Assistant Professorhip at Harvard University for 4 years, he returned to Israel, and became Associate Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He moved to the University of Toronto in 2002, and was promoted to Full Professor in 2006.^[1]

Bar-Natan holds both US and Israeli citizenships, and is a permanent resident of Canada. He is married to Yael Karshon and is the father of two sons, Assaf and Itai.^[2]

In 1999, Bar-Natan collaborated on a paper with the goal of mathematically refuting claims made in The Bible Code by Michael Drosnin that hidden messages could be deciphered from within the bible. In particular, he demonstrated that practically any "code" could be found within the bible, thereby debunking Drosnin's "discovery" of specific codes. This work is outside the main scope of his academic interests, although he is known for it because of the popularity of The Bible Code.

Academically, Bar-Natan has made significant contributions to the formalization of Khovanov homology.