Boris Weisfeiler

Boris Yulievich Weisfeiler
BornApril 19, 1941 (1941-04-19)
DisappearedJanuary 1985
San Fabián de Alico, Chile
StatusMissing for 41 years, 2 months and 16 days
Scientific career
Alma materSteklov Institute of Mathematics (Ph.D.)
Known for
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsPennsylvania State University
Thesis Some properties of anisotropic algebraic groups  (1970)
Doctoral advisorÈrnest Borisovich Vinberg

Boris Weisfeiler (born 19 April 1941 – disappeared 4–5 January 1985) was a Soviet-born mathematician and professor at Penn State University who lived in the United States before disappearing in Chile in 1985. Declassified US documents suggest a Chilean army patrol seized Weisfeiler and took him to Colonia Dignidad, a secretive Germanic agricultural commune set up in Chile in the 1960s. During the Chilean Pinochet military dictatorship Boris Weisfeiler allegedly drowned. He is known for the Weisfeiler filtration, Weisfeiler–Leman algorithm and Kac–Weisfeiler conjectures.