Early influences

``Yuval” means a brook (as a noun) and “will be led” (as a verb) in Hebrew. According to Genesis 4:19-21, Yuval was “father of all violin and harp players” (יוּבָל הוּא הָיָה אֲבִי כָּל תֹּפֵשׂ כִּנּוֹר וְעוּגָב) -- or ``God of Music" in Greek or Babylonian translation, a son of Lemech -- a descendant of Cain – and Adah. Zvi (German spelling; Tzvi in English spelling; meaning Hirsch in German, deer in English) is mother’s maternal grandfather’s name. I was born in Kfar Saba, in the land of the tribe Menashe, foothills of Samaria.

I entered primary school Hillel in Ramat Gan at the age of five at my mother’s insistence. I see myself as religiously anti-religious since doing my Bar Mitzvah at age 13 against my will. The Six Day War of 1967 deeply impressed me: I decided that if I lived in Israel as an adult, I would live in the liberated ancestral land. I wanted to concentrate on Literature at Blich High school, but agreed to Math and Physics at teachers’ insistence. I participated in the Weizmann Institute summer 1970 camp for Science oriented youth. I was expelled from the four-year Blich High school at the end of the third year, for original initiative, in 1971.

Prior to that I was admitted to Tel Aviv University School of Mathematics, where I tried, but did not continue studying Physics. I preferred abstraction, as remote from applications as possible. I completed my BA in the two years 1971-1973 in Math (major) with minor in Philosophy (which turned out to be incompatible with my interest in Friedrich Nietzsche, Knut Hamsun, Pinchas Sadeh). I was influenced by visiting Nottingham Number Theoretician Heini Halberstam in my second and last year at Tel-Aviv University.

I was admitted to graduate study at the Hebrew University Institute of Mathematics. In the summer of 1973, after completing military training on Thursday October 4, and having slept 48 hours until the sirens went off, I volunteered to fight on the Egyptian front during the Yom Kippur War. Under the command of General Avraham Adan I reached the Sweet Water Canal and El-Adabiya Port in "Africa", trapping the Egyptian 3rd Army. I then shattered my right knee during an operation in the Jordan Valley. This led to a stay in the orthopedic department of Hadassah Medical Center at Ein Kerem in Jerusalem. I managed to walk on my own down to the election booth to participate in the 1973 elections, and was disappointed with the return to power of Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan. I completed my Master’s degree in 1973-1974 at the Hebrew University Institute of Mathematics, my advisor was Hillel Furstenberg.

I was awarded a Trinity College, Cambridge Bursar Scholarship to study at DPMMS, Cambridge, and moved to Cambridge, where I first studied Part III of the Mathematical Tripos in 1974-1975. This was followed by a Ph.D. thesis in 1975-1978, at Trinity College, Cambridge, entitled Linear Forms on Abelian Varieties over Local Fields, under the supervision of Fields Medalist Alan Baker. Some memories from that time are here. The thesis resulted in five publications, but a significant part of the final year was spent in Israel studying automorphic representations, in particular of the Metaplectic group, and the trace formula for GL(2).