Alexander (Smbat) Abian (January 1, 1923 – July 24, 1999) was an Iranian-born

Armenian-American Armenian Americans ( hy, ամերիկահայեր, ''amerikahayer'') are citizens or residents of the United States who have total or partial Armenian ancestry. They form the second largest community of the Armenian diaspora after Armenians in ...

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 ...

who taught for over 25 years at

Iowa State University Iowa State University of Science and Technology (Iowa State University, Iowa State, or ISU) is a public land-grant research university in Ames, Iowa. Founded in 1858 as the Iowa Agricultural College and Model Farm, Iowa State became one of the ...

and became notable for his frequent posts to various

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s, and his advocacy for the destruction of the moon.

Life

Abian was born in

Tabriz, Iran Tabriz ( fa, تبریز ; ) is a city in northwestern Iran, serving as the capital of East Azerbaijan Province. It is the sixth-most-populous city in Iran. In the Quru River valley in Iran's historic Azerbaijan region between long ridges of vol ...

, and was of

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...

ethnicity. After earning an undergraduate degree in Iran, he emigrated to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

in 1950, where he received a master's degree from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

. Abian then obtained a Ph.D. from the

University of Cincinnati The University of Cincinnati (UC or Cincinnati) is a public research university in Cincinnati, Ohio. Founded in 1819 as Cincinnati College, it is the oldest institution of higher education in Cincinnati and has an annual enrollment of over 44,00 ...

, where he wrote a dissertation on a topic in

invariant theory Invariant theory is a branch of abstract algebra dealing with actions of groups on algebraic varieties, such as vector spaces, from the point of view of their effect on functions. Classically, the theory dealt with the question of explicit descri ...

under the direction of Isaac Barnett. After teaching posts in

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; (Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, Ma ...

, and

Ohio Ohio () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Of the List of states and territories of the United States, fifty U.S. states, it is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 34th-l ...

, he joined the faculty of Iowa State in 1967. He wrote three books and published more than two hundred papers. He retired in 1993.

Moonless Earth theory

Abian gained a degree of international notoriety for his claim that blowing up the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width ...

would end virtually every natural disaster. He made this claim in 1991 in a campus newspaper, stating that a Moonless Earth wouldn't wobble, eliminating both the seasons and its associated events like

heat waves A heat wave, or heatwave, is a period of excessively hot weather, which may be accompanied by high humidity, especially in oceanic climate countries. While definitions vary, a heat wave is usually measured relative to the usual climate in the ...

snowstorms A winter storm is an event in which wind coincides with varieties of precipitation that only occur at freezing temperatures, such as snow, mixed snow and rain, or freezing rain. In temperate continental climates, these storms are not necessar ...

and

hurricanes A tropical cyclone is a rapidly rotating storm, storm system characterized by a Low-pressure area, low-pressure center, a closed low-level atmospheric circulation, Beaufort scale, strong winds, and a spiral arrangement of thunderstorms tha ...

.Valente, Judith. "Hate Winter? Here's A Scientist's Answer: Blow Up the Moon." The Wall Street Journal. April 22, 1991. Abian said that "Those critics who say 'Dismiss Abian's ideas' are very close to those who dismissed Galileo." The proposed nuclear destruction of the Moon has been rejected by astronomers on several grounds: the nuclear arsenal of mankind would fail to do more than crack the Moon's crust; if successful, the heating of Earth's atmosphere by a hail of falling lunar debris would be destructive to all life; and an increase, not decrease, in the Earth's wobble without a stabilizing Moon, leading to an Earth

axial tilt In astronomy, axial tilt, also known as obliquity, is the angle between an object's rotational axis and its orbital axis, which is the line perpendicular to its orbital plane; equivalently, it is the angle between its equatorial plane and orb ...

of 45 degrees and more drastic

seasons A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and po ...

would occur.

Books

*1965. *1971. *1976.

References

External links

Alexander (Smbat) Abian
at the

Mathematics Genealogy Project The Mathematics Genealogy Project (MGP) is a web-based database for the academic genealogy of mathematicians.. By 31 December 2021, it contained information on 274,575 mathematical scientists who contributed to research-level mathematics. For a ty ...

*
Author profile
in the database

zbMATH zbMATH Open, formerly Zentralblatt MATH, is a major reviewing service providing reviews and abstracts for articles in pure and applied mathematics, produced by the Berlin office of FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructur ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Abian, Alexander 1923 births 1999 deaths 20th-century American mathematicians Iranian people of Armenian descent American people of Armenian descent Iowa State University faculty Iranian emigrants to the United States People from Tabriz University of Chicago alumni University of Cincinnati alumni Usenet people

Life

Moonless Earth theory

Books

See also

References

External links