Shmuel Weinberger

Shmuel Weinberger is the Andrew MacLeish Distinguished Service Professor of Mathematics at the University of Chicago, a topologist who studies quantitative and applied topology and helps test AI systems on research-level mathematics. He earned a PhD in mathematics in 1982 under Sylvain Cappell at the Courant Institute, and after two years as an Instructor at Princeton he joined Chicago. With Partha Niyogi and Stephen Smale, he published papers in 2008 and 2011 on finding the homology of submanifolds from random samples and on a topological view of unsupervised learning. From 2012 to 2017 he chaired the Chicago mathematics department, and in 2013 he became a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society and of the AAAS. In February 2026, he co-authored the First Proof paper, whose ten research-level questions test AI systems, and he now sits on the First Proof Project's Board of Directors.

Now at: University of Chicago
Born: 1963
Works: 222
Citations: 2,884
h-index: 26
Badges: Loyal

Years link to their sources. Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

1981–1982

A BA and PhD at NYU

He enters a concurrent BA-PhD program at New York University and earns a BA in 1981 and a PhD in mathematics in 1982 under Sylvain Cappell at the Courant Institute. After two years as an Instructor at Princeton, he moves to the University of Chicago.
1994–1996

Scott Professor at Penn

He holds the Thomas A. Scott Professorship of Mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania from 1994 to 1996. In 1994, University of Chicago Press publishes his book The topological classification of stratified spaces, and he gives an invited lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Zürich.
2008–2011

Topology and unsupervised learning

With Partha Niyogi and Stephen Smale, he publishes "Finding the homology of submanifolds with high confidence from random samples" in Discrete & Computational Geometry in 2008. The same three authors publish "A topological view of unsupervised learning from noisy data" in the SIAM Journal on Computing in 2011.
2012–2017

Chairing Chicago mathematics

From 2012 to 2017, he chairs the Department of Mathematics at the University of Chicago.
2013

AMS and AAAS fellowships

He is one of 20 University of Chicago faculty members named to the American Mathematical Society's first class of fellows for 2013, while he chairs the mathematics department. The AAAS Council also elects him a Fellow of AAAS for 2013, in its Section on Mathematics.
June 2020

Clay Lecture on persistent homology

In June 2020, he gives the Clay Lecture "Persistent Homology from Chebyshev and Weierstrass to Gromov -- or focusing on the small bars" online at the Fields Institute's Workshop on Topological Data Analysis.
February 2026

Ten questions for AI systems

In February 2026, he is one of eleven authors of the arXiv paper "First Proof", which shares ten research-level mathematics questions drawn from the authors' own research to assess the ability of current AI systems to answer them.
As of October 2026

First Proof director, Chicago professor

He serves on the Board of Directors of the First Proof Project, which provides independent, transparent, and rigorous engagement with the evolving capabilities of AI in research mathematics. At the University of Chicago, he is the Andrew MacLeish Distinguished Service Professor of Mathematics, and his research focuses on quantitative and applied topology.