Born into a peasant family, Iskovskikh entered in 1958 the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of
Tashkent State University. In 1963, as an outstanding student, he was invited to become a student at the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of
Moscow State University. There he became an active participant in
Igor Shafarevich's seminar and, following the recommendation of
Yuri Manin, studied
birational geometry. After graduating in 1964, Iskovskikh entered the graduate school of the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of Moscow State University and received in 1968 his
Candidate of Sciences degree (PhD) under the supervision of Yuri Manin. Iskovskikh worked from 1968 to 1974 at the Central Economics and Mathematics Institute of the
Russian Academy of Sciences and from 1974 to 1977 at the All-Russian Research Institute of Integrated Automation of the Oil and Gas Industry. In the Department of Higher Algebra of Moscow State University's Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics, he was from 1977 to 1987 a senior researcher, from 1987 to 1990 a leading researcher, and from 1990 until his death a professor. In the Department of Number Theory of the
Steklov Institute of Mathematics, he did research since 1990 and was appointed a professor in 1992. In 1990 he received his Russian
Doctor of Sciences degree (habilitation). In it, an effective method (the "method of maximal singularities") is constructed, which allows one to comprehensively describe birational maps of rationally connected three-dimensional manifolds. The three-dimensional quartic is foundational for modern research in birational geometry. In 1983 Iskovskikh was an Invited Speaker with talk
Algebraic 3-folds with special regard to the problem of rationality at the
International Congress of Mathematicians in Warsaw. In 2000 he was awarded the A.A. Markov Prize of the
Russian Academy of Sciences. In 2002 he was made an Honorary Doctor of the
University of Turin. In 2008 he was elected a corresponding member of the
Russian Academy of Sciences. From June 29 to July 3, 2009, the Steklov Institute held an international conference on the geometry of algebraic varieties as a memorial to V. A. Iskovskikh. ==Selected publications==