by Umut Varolgüneş
Yasha is one of the founders of the field of contact/symplectic geometry, the field that I work in and love. I sometimes think about how it must have been to be him, to see the whole field open up and flourish in his hands, right in front of his eyes. Yet, this is not the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of Yasha. I was at Stanford during a stressful period of my life and often went to Yasha for some counsel. What always helped me, inspired me to not be affected so much by whatever problem I had was the feeling that he genuinely cared about my well-being. He always convinced me that he really believed in me and that I didn’t have to doubt myself so much. His words did not seem generic; his encouragement felt personal and it just always helped me. I thank him for being such a positive force for me and our community.
Umut Varolgüneş is a symplectic geometer at Koç University in Istanbul. He did his undergraduate and graduate studies at MIT, and moved to Stanford (with Yasha as his mentor) for a three-year postdoc afterwards.
