David Volfovich Chudnovsky (born January 22, 1947) and Gregory Volfovich Chudnovsky (born April 17, 1952) are American mathematicians and engineers known for their world-record mathematical calculations and developing the Chudnovsky algorithm used to calculate the digits of with extreme precision. Both were born in

Kiev Kyiv, also Kiev, is the capital and most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both sides of the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2022, its population was 2, ...

Ukrainian SSR The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, abbreviated as the Ukrainian SSR, UkrSSR, and also known as Soviet Ukraine or just Ukraine, was one of the Republics of the Soviet Union, constituent republics of the Soviet Union from 1922 until 1991. ...

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

(now

Kyiv Kyiv, also Kiev, is the capital and most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both sides of the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2022, its population was 2, ...

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 ...

Careers in mathematics

As a child, Gregory Chudnovsky was given a copy of '' What Is Mathematics?'' by his father (Volf Grigorovich Chudnovski, a Soviet-Ukrainian professor of technical sciences) and decided that he wanted to be a mathematician. As a high schooler, he solved

Hilbert's tenth problem Hilbert's tenth problem is the tenth on the list of mathematical problems that the German mathematician David Hilbert posed in 1900. It is the challenge to provide a general algorithm that, for any given Diophantine equation (a polynomial equatio ...

, shortly after

Yuri Matiyasevich Yuri Vladimirovich Matiyasevich (; born 2 March 1947 in Leningrad 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 ...

had solved it. He received a mathematics degree from Kyiv State University in 1974 and a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

the following year from the Institute of Mathematics, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. In part to avoid

religious persecution Religious persecution is the systematic oppression of an individual or a group of individuals as a response to their religion, religious beliefs or affiliations or their irreligion, lack thereof. The tendency of societies or groups within socie ...

and in part to seek better medical care for Gregory, who had been diagnosed with

myasthenia gravis Myasthenia gravis (MG) is a long-term neuromuscular junction disease that leads to varying degrees of skeletal muscle weakness. The most commonly affected muscles are those of the eyes, face, and swallowing. It can result in double vision, ...

, a neuromuscular disease, the Chudnovsky family applied in 1976 for permission to emigrate from the

. Although the family was harassed by the

KGB The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...

for attempting to leave the country, the brothers were eventually able to secure their emigration with the help of

United States Senator The United States Senate consists of 100 members, two from each of the 50 U.S. state, states. This list includes all senators serving in the 119th United States Congress. Party affiliation Independent Senators Angus King of Maine and Berni ...

Henry M. Jackson Henry Martin "Scoop" Jackson (May 31, 1912 – September 1, 1983) was an American lawyer and politician who served as a U.S. representative (1941–1953) and U.S. senator (1953–1983) from the state of Washington (state), Washington. A Cold W ...

and mathematician

Edwin Hewitt Edwin Hewitt (January 20, 1920, Everett, Washington – June 21, 1999) was an American mathematician known for his work in abstract harmonic analysis and for his discovery, in collaboration with Leonard Jimmie Savage, of the Hewitt–Savage z ...

. A 1992 article in ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

'' quoted the opinion of several mathematicians that Gregory Chudnovsky was one of the world's best living mathematicians. David Chudnovsky works closely with and assists his brother Gregory. Despite their accomplishments and the attention brought to them by their profile in ''The New Yorker'', the Chudnovsky brothers largely worked alone for decades. A 1997 Karen Arenson article in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' theorized that this was due to some combination of the brothers' lack of a specialization (they worked on topics including

number theory Number theory is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and arithmetic functions. Number theorists study prime numbers as well as the properties of mathematical objects constructed from integers (for example ...

applied physics Applied physics is the application of physics to solve scientific or engineering problems. It is usually considered a bridge or a connection between physics and engineering. "Applied" is distinguished from "pure" by a subtle combination of fac ...

and

computers A computer is a machine that can be programmed to automatically carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations ('' computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as ''programs'', ...

), Gregory's medical condition, their refusal to leave

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

and their insistence on being hired together. In the summer of 1997, they were hired as professors at Polytechnic University in

Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

after borough president Howard Golden helped find funding for their salaries. The Chudnovsky brothers have held records, at different times, for computing to the largest number of places, including two billion digits in the early 1990s on a supercomputer they built (dubbed "m-zero") in their apartment in

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

. In 1987, the Chudnovsky brothers developed the algorithm (now called the Chudnovsky algorithm) that they used to break several computation records. Today, this algorithm is used by

Mathematica Wolfram (previously known as Mathematica and Wolfram Mathematica) is a software system with built-in libraries for several areas of technical computing that allows machine learning, statistics, symbolic computation, data manipulation, network ...

to calculate , and has continued to be used by others who have achieved

world record A world record is usually the best global and most important performance that is ever recorded and officially verified in a specific skill, sport, or other kind of activity. The book ''Guinness World Records'' and other world records organizatio ...

s in pi calculation. The brothers also assisted the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

around 2003 in the merging of a series of digital photographs taken of '' The Hunt of the Unicorn'' tapestries during their cleaning. PBS aired a program on its science show '' Nova'', hosted by

Robert Krulwich Robert Louis Krulwich (born August 5, 1947) is a retired American radio and television journalist who co-hosted the radio show '' Radiolab'' and served as a science correspondent for NPR. He has reported for ABC, CBS, and Pacifica, with assi ...

, that described the difficulties in photographing the tapestries and the math used to fix them. The brothers later became Distinguished Industry Professors at the

New York University Tandon School of Engineering The New York University Tandon School of Engineering (commonly referred to as Tandon) is the engineering and applied sciences school of New York University. Tandon is the second oldest private engineering and technology school in the United St ...

, where they work on subjects such as

graph isomorphism In graph theory, an isomorphism of graphs ''G'' and ''H'' is a bijection between the vertex sets of ''G'' and ''H'' : f \colon V(G) \to V(H) such that any two vertices ''u'' and ''v'' of ''G'' are adjacent in ''G'' if and only if f(u) and f(v) a ...

. Gregory was awarded the

MacArthur Fellowship The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and colloquially called the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the MacArthur Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to typically between 20 and ...

(also known as the "Genius Grant") in 1981.

Notes

References

External links

* * NYU faculty page * NYU faculty page {{DEFAULTSORT:Chudnovsky 1947 births 1952 births 20th-century American mathematicians 20th-century Ukrainian mathematicians Living people MacArthur Fellows Scientists from Kyiv Pi-related people Polytechnic Institute of New York University faculty Brother duos Ukrainian Jews Engineers from Kyiv 21st-century Ukrainian engineers