Alexander Molev is a pure mathematician who has made substantial research contributions to algebra, representation theory, algebraic combinatorics and mathematical physics. He is a world-leading expert on ‘Yangians’, a particular class of quantum groups that he has used to solve longstanding open problems. Alexander’s book Yangians and Classical Lie Algebras’ is widely viewed as the definitive monograph in the field. In 2001, he was awarded the prestigious AustMS Medal of the Australian Mathematical Society for his work in representation theory.