Sergei Vasilyevich Fomin (russian: Серге́й Васи́льевич Фоми́н; 9 December 1917 – 17 August 1975) was a
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
who was co-author with
Andrey Kolmogorov
Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov ( rus, Андре́й Никола́евич Колмого́ров, p=ɐnˈdrʲej nʲɪkɐˈlajɪvʲɪtɕ kəlmɐˈɡorəf, a=Ru-Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov.ogg, 25 April 1903 – 20 October 1987) was a Sovi ...
of ''Introductory real analysis'', and co-author with
Israel Gelfand
Israel Moiseevich Gelfand, also written Israïl Moyseyovich Gel'fand, or Izrail M. Gelfand ( yi, ישראל געלפֿאַנד, russian: Изра́иль Моисе́евич Гельфа́нд, uk, Ізраїль Мойсейович Гел� ...
of ''Calculus of Variations'' (1963),
[.] both books that are widely read in Russian and in English.
Fomin entered
Moscow State University
M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...
at the age of 16. His first paper was published at 19 on infinite
abelian groups
In mathematics, an abelian group, also called a commutative group, is a group in which the result of applying the group operation to two group elements does not depend on the order in which they are written. That is, the group operation is commut ...
. After his graduation he worked with Kolmogorov. He was drafted during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, after which he returned to Moscow.
When the war ended Fomin returned to Moscow State University and joined
Andrey Tikhonov
Andrey Valeryevich Tikhonov (russian: Андрей Валерьевич Тихонов; born 16 October 1970) is a Russian football manager and a former midfielder who was recently the manager of Kazakhstani club Astana. Tikhonov is primarily k ...
's department. In 1951 he was awarded his habilitation for a dissertation on
dynamical system
In mathematics, a dynamical system is a system in which a function describes the time dependence of a point in an ambient space. Examples include the mathematical models that describe the swinging of a clock pendulum, the flow of water i ...
s with invariant measure. Two years later he was appointed a professor. Later in life, he became involved with mathematical aspects of biology.
The American mathematician
Paul Halmos
Paul Richard Halmos ( hu, Halmos Pál; March 3, 1916 – October 2, 2006) was a Hungarian-born American mathematician and statistician who made fundamental advances in the areas of mathematical logic, probability theory, statistics, operator ...
wrote the following about Fomin:
''Some of the mathematical interests of Sergei Vasilovich were always close to some of mine (measure and ergodic theory); he supervised the translation of a couple of my books into Russian. We had corresponded before we met, and it was a pleasure to shake hands with a man instead of reading a letter. Three or four years later he came to visit me in Hawaii, and it was a pleasure to see him enjoy, in contrast to Moscow, the warm sunshine''.
Fomin died in
Vladivostok
Vladivostok ( rus, Владивосто́к, a=Владивосток.ogg, p=vɫədʲɪvɐˈstok) is the largest city and the administrative center of Primorsky Krai, Russia. The city is located around the Golden Horn Bay on the Sea of Japan, ...
.
References
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fomin, Sergei
Fomin, Sergey V.
Fomin, Sergey V.
Fomin, Sergey V.
Fomin, Sergey V.
Moscow State University alumni
Academic staff of Moscow State University
Functional analysts