Aleksandr Danilovich Aleksandrov (; 4 August 1912 – 27 July 1999) was a Soviet and Russian
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, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...
,
physicist
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...
,
philosopher
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
and
mountaineer.
Personal life
Aleksandr Aleksandrov was born in 1912 in Volyn,
Ryazan Oblast. His father was a headmaster of a secondary school in
St Petersburg and his mother a teacher at said school, thus the young Alekandrov spent a majority of his childhood in the city.
His family was old Russian nobility—students noted ancestral portraits which hung in his office.
His sisters were Soviet botanist
Vera Danilovna Aleksandrov (RU) and Maria Danilovna Aleksandrova, author of the first monograph on gerontopsychology in the USSR. In 1937, he married a student of the Faculty of Physics, Marianna Leonidovna Georg. Together they had two children: Daria (b. 1948) and
Daniil (RU) (b. 1957).
In 1980, he married Svetlana Mikhailovna Vladimirova (nee Bogacheva). In 1951 he became a member of the
Communist Party.
Alekandrov had a personal love for poetry, writing and translating. Once, on a trip to London, he was received as a visiting Shakespeare scholar.
He was also very well travelled, visiting India, the US, and throughout Europe.
Scientific career
He graduated from the Department of Physics of
Leningrad State University. His advisors there were
Vladimir Fock, a physicist, and
Boris Delaunay, a mathematician. In 1933 Aleksandrov worked at the
State Optical Institute (GOI) and at the same time gave lectures at the Department of Mathematics and Mechanics of the university. He completed his
Ph.D. in 1935 at the university and later in 1937 — a
D.Sc. dissertation. He became a professor at the university, while also working at
LOMI, the Leningrad Department of the
Steklov Mathematical Institute (now PDMI,
Petersburg Department of the Mathematical Institute). Appointed the
rector of the university in 1952, Aleksandrov remained in this position until 1964. He was the youngest rector in university history, and was fairly popular. One of his main contributions was the attempted move of Leningrad State University to Old Peterhof, which proved unsuccessful.
In 1946 he became a corresponding member, and in 1964 a
full member of the
USSR Academy of Sciences. Since1975 he was also a member of the
Accademia dei Quaranta.
From 1964 to 1986 Aleksandrov lived in
Novosibirsk
Novosibirsk is the largest city and administrative centre of Novosibirsk Oblast and the Siberian Federal District in Russia. As of the 2021 Russian census, 2021 census, it had a population of 1,633,595, making it the most populous city in Siber ...
, heading the Laboratory of
Geometry
Geometry (; ) is a branch of mathematics concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. Geometry is, along with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. A mathematician w ...
of the Institute of Mathematics of the
Siberia
Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...
n Division of the USSR Academy of Sciences, teaching at
Novosibirsk State University. In 1986 he returned to Leningrad (now
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...
) to head the geometry laboratory at LOMI.
Aleksandrov's main work was in the study of differential geometry and physics. His work in geometry specifically is said to be second only to Gauss by N. V. Efimov, V. A. Zalgaller and A. V. Pogorelov.
Awards
Partial list of the awards,
medal
A medal or medallion is a small portable artistic object, a thin disc, normally of metal, carrying a design, usually on both sides. They typically have a commemorative purpose of some kind, and many are presented as awards. They may be in ...
s, and prizes awarded to Aleksandrov:
*
Stalin Prize (1942)
*
Lobachevsky International Prize (1951)
*
Euler Gold Medal of the
Russian Academy of Sciences
The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across the Russian Federation; and additional scientific and social units such ...
(1992)
One of the many
orders that he was awarded was given to him in 1990 for his efforts in preserving genetics from the attacks of the pseudoscience of
Lysenkoism that had official state support in the times of
Stalin and
Khrushchev.
Works by Aleksandrov
Aleksandrov wrote a multitude of books, scientific papers,
textbook
A textbook is a book containing a comprehensive compilation of content in a branch of study with the intention of explaining it. Textbooks are produced to meet the needs of educators, usually at educational institutions, but also of learners ( ...
s for various levels (schools to universities), including
''Convex Polyhedra'', originally published in Russian in 1950 and translated into English in 2005. He also wrote non-mathematical papers,
memoir
A memoir (; , ) is any nonfiction narrative writing based on the author's personal memories. The assertions made in the work are thus understood to be factual. While memoir has historically been defined as a subcategory of biography or autob ...
s about famous scientists, and philosophical
essay
An essay ( ) is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a Letter (message), letter, a term paper, paper, an article (publishing), article, a pamphlet, and a s ...
s dealing with the moral values of science.
A full bibliography is available in
/nowiki>. Selected works are available in English:
* Alexandrov, A.D. Selected works. Part 1: Selected scientific papers. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Publishers. x, 322 p. (1996).
* Alexandrov, A.D. Selected works. Intrinsic geometry of convex surfaces. Vol. 2. Boca Raton, FL: Chapman & Hall/CRC. xiii, 426 p. (2005).
* Alexandrov, A.D. Convex polyhedra. Springer: Berlin. xi, 539 p. (2005). (1st edition, 1950)
* Alexandrov, A.D. Die innere Geometrie der konvexen Flächen. Akademie Verlag. (1955). (German translation of 1948 Russian original)
Students of Aleksandrov
* I. Liberman, S. Olovianishnikoff, P. Kostelyanetz — all the three of them died on the battlefields of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
*
A. Pogorelov — from
Kharkov
Kharkiv, also known as Kharkov, is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city in Ukraine.
* A. Yusupov — from
Bukhara
Bukhara ( ) is the List of cities in Uzbekistan, seventh-largest city in Uzbekistan by population, with 280,187 residents . It is the capital of Bukhara Region.
People have inhabited the region around Bukhara for at least five millennia, and t ...
* Students from the Aleksandrov Leningrad period (ordered by the time of joining the
seminar
A seminar is a form of academic instruction, either at an academic institution or offered by a commercial or professional organization. It has the function of bringing together small groups for recurring meetings, focusing each time on some part ...
s): Yu. Borisov,
V. Zalgaller,
Yu. Reshetnyak, I. Bakelman, Yu. Volkov,
A. Zamorzaev, S. Bogacheva (who later married Aleksandrov), Yu. Borovskii, R. Pimenov
* Sobchuk and Starokhozyayev — from
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...
* G. Rusiyeshvili — from
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a country in the Caucasus region on the coast of the Black Sea. It is located at the intersection of Eastern Europe and West Asia, and is today generally regarded as part of Europe. It is bordered to the north and northeast by Russ ...
* B. Frank and H. Frank — from
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
*
Yu. Burago, V. Kreinovich;
Grigori Perelman
* Moved from
Alma-Ata after Aleksandrov's lecture tour there: M. Kvachko, V. Ovchinnikova, E. Sen'kin
* Stayed in Alma-Ata: A. Zilberberg, V. Strel'cov, D. Yusupov
* Novosibirsk students: A. Guts, A. Kuz'minykh, A. Levichev, and A. Shaidenko.
Both in St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk Aleksandrov participated in joint research also with some of his students' students. Several of them became his co-authors: V. Berestovskii, A. Verner, N. Netsvetaev, I. Nikolaev, and V. Ryzhik.
His last Ph.D. student was
Grigori Perelman who proved
Thurston's geometrization conjecture in 2002/2003 which contains the
Poincaré conjecture as a special case.
Mountaineering
Aleksandrov became attracted to alpinism under the influence of his advisor
Boris Delaunay. In the summer of 1937, after defending his D.Sc.,
:''…together with I. Chashnikov he makes a first climb to the Chotchi summit, and with K. Piskaryov performs a climb of Bu-Ul'gen via the western wall (one of the first wall climbs in the history of the Soviet alpinism).
/nowiki> In 1940 he participates in a record-making traversal /nowiki> He manages, almost by a miracle, to stop the fall of A. Gromov, who had fallen along with a snow shelf. It was with this traversal that Aleksandrov completed the alpinist sports master requirements. The German-Soviet War postponed awarding him this honorary title until 1949.''
See also
* CAT(''k'') space
* Cauchy's theorem
* Alexandrov theorem
* Aleksandrov–Rassias problem
* Alexandrov–Fenchel inequality
* Alexandrov's uniqueness theorem
* Alexandrov’s soap bubble theorem
Notes
References
# ''Академик Александр Данилович Александров. Воспоминания. Публикации. Материалы. ''(Academician Aleksandr Danilovich Aleksandrov. Recollections. Publications. Biographical materials, in Russian). Editors: G.M. Idlis and O.A. Ladyzhenskaya. Moscow, ''Nauka'' publishing house, 2002.
# Yu. F. Borisov,
On the 90th anniversary of the birth of A.D. Aleksandrov (1912–1999)
", ''Russ. Math. Surv.'', 2002, 57 (5), 1017–1031.
# Yu. F. Borisov, V.A. Zalgaller, Kutateladze, S.S., O.A. Ladyzhenskaya, A.V. Pogorelov, Yu. G. Reshetnyak,
К 90-летию со дня рождения А.Д. Александрова (1912–1999)
, ''Uspekhi Mat. Nauk'', 2002, 57 (5), 169–181.
# Liyun Tan and Shuhuang Xiang
''On the Aleksandrov-Rassias problem and the Hyers-Ulam-Rassias stability problem''
Banach Journal of Mathematical Analysis, 1(1)(2007), 11–22.
# A.M. Vershik,
Alexander Danilovich as I knew him (in Russian).
, St. Petersburg University, No. 3-4 (2004), 36–40.
# Shuhuang, Xiang
''On the Aleksandrov-Rassias problem for isometric mappings''
Functional Equations, Inequalities and Applications, Kluwer Acad. Publ., Dordrecht, 2003, pp. 191–221.
External links
* (with additional photos)
* (incomplete students listing as of December 2004)
Review of Alexandrov's ''"Convex Polytopes"''
– by R. Connelly, published at the Mathematical Reviews
''Mathematical Reviews'' is a journal published by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) that contains brief synopses, and in some cases evaluations, of many articles in mathematics, statistics, and theoretical computer science.
The AMS also pu ...
.
Alexandr Danilovich Alexandrov
– biography, reminiscences, references (from St. Petersburg Mathematical Society website)
– by S.S. Kutateladze
Alexandrov Par Excellence
– by S.S. Kutateladze
Alexandrov of Ancient Hellas
– by S.S. Kutateladze
Author profile
in the database zbMATH
The Rector (a film)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Aleksandrov, Aleksandr
1912 births
1999 deaths
People from Rybnovsky District
People from Ryazansky Uyezd
Communist Party of the Soviet Union members
Members of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, 1959–1963
20th-century Russian philosophers
Differential geometers
Soviet mathematicians
Soviet mountain climbers
Russian mountain climbers
Soviet physicists
Saint Petersburg State University alumni
Rectors of Saint Petersburg State University
Academic staff of Herzen University
Academic staff of Novosibirsk State University
Full Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Full Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences
Recipients of the Stalin Prize
Recipients of the Order of Lenin
Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour
Recipients of the Order of Friendship of Peoples
Recipients of the Order of Honour (Russia)
Burials at Bogoslovskoe Cemetery
Russian mathematicians
Russian physicists