Dmytro Oleksandrovych Grave (, ; 6 September 1863 – 19 December 1939) was a
Ukrainian,
Russia
Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
n and
Soviet
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 ...
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 ...
.
Naum Akhiezer
Naum Ilyich Akhiezer (; ; 6 March 1901 – 3 June 1980) was a Soviet and Ukrainian mathematician of Jewish origin, known for his works in approximation theory and the theory of differential and integral operators. He is also known as the autho ...
,
Nikolai Chebotaryov,
Mikhailo Kravchuk, and
Boris Delaunay
Boris Nikolayevich Delaunay or Delone (; 15 March 1890 – 17 July 1980) was a Soviet and Russian mathematician, mountain climber, and the father of physicist, Nikolai Borisovich Delone. He is best known for the Delaunay triangulation.
Biograph ...
were among his students.
Brief history
Dmitry Grave was educated at the
University of St Petersburg where he studied under
Chebyshev
Pafnuty Lvovich Chebyshev ( rus, Пафну́тий Льво́вич Чебышёв, p=pɐfˈnutʲɪj ˈlʲvovʲɪtɕ tɕɪbɨˈʂof) ( – ) was a list of Russian mathematicians, Russian mathematician and considered to be the founding father o ...
and his students
Korkin,
Zolotarev and
Markov Markov ( Bulgarian, ), Markova, and Markoff are common surnames used in Russia and Bulgaria. Notable people with the name include:
Academics
* Ivana Markova (1938–2024), Czechoslovak-British emeritus professor of psychology at the University of S ...
. Grave began research while a student, graduating with his doctorate in 1896. He had obtained his master's degree in 1889 and, in that year, began teaching at the University of St Petersburg.
For his master's degree Grave studied
Jacobi's methods for the
three-body problem
In physics, specifically classical mechanics, the three-body problem is to take the initial positions and velocities (or momenta) of three point masses orbiting each other in space and then calculate their subsequent trajectories using Newton' ...
, a topic suggested by Korkin. His doctorate was on
map projection
In cartography, a map projection is any of a broad set of Transformation (function) , transformations employed to represent the curved two-dimensional Surface (mathematics), surface of a globe on a Plane (mathematics), plane. In a map projection, ...
s, again a topic proposed by Korkin, the degree being awarded in 1896. The work, on equal area plane projections of the sphere, built on ideas of
Euler
Leonhard Euler ( ; ; ; 15 April 170718 September 1783) was a Swiss polymath who was active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, logician, geographer, and engineer. He founded the studies of graph theory and topology and made influential ...
,
Joseph Louis Lagrange
Joseph-Louis Lagrange (born Giuseppe Luigi Lagrangia[Kharkiv University
The V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University (), also known as Kharkiv National University or Karazin University, is a public university in Kharkiv, Ukraine. It was founded in 1804 through the efforts of Vasily Karazin, becoming the second old ...](_blank)
in 1897 (
Kharkiv
Kharkiv, also known as Kharkov, is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city in Ukraine. ,
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 ...
) and, from 1902, he was appointed professor at the
Kyiv University, where he remained for the rest of his life. Grave is considered as the founder of the Kyiv school of algebra which was to become the centre for algebra in the
Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic
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. ...
.
At Kyiv Grave studied algebra and
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 ...
. In particular he worked on
Galois theory
In mathematics, Galois theory, originally introduced by Évariste Galois, provides a connection between field (mathematics), field theory and group theory. This connection, the fundamental theorem of Galois theory, allows reducing certain problems ...
, ideals and equations of the fifth degree. Among his pupils were
O J Schmidt,
N G Chebotaryov,
B N Delone and
A M Ostrowski.
The Revolution of 1917 had some major effects on the development of mathematics in Russia and Ukraine. One effect was that mathematics in Ukraine was required to be more practical and algebra did not fit into this applied mathematics and technology dominated scene. Grave had to discontinue his famous Kyiv algebra seminar in the 1920s, give up teaching and research in algebra, and move to applied mathematics topics. It would not be before the 1950s, well after Grave's death, that
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, ...
would again play a major role in algebra research.
Grave chaired the Applied Mathematics Commission of the
Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in the 1920s. After Grave stopped work on algebra, he began to study mechanics and applied mathematics, but he never completely gave up algebra.
During the 1930s there were further changes to the Soviet educational system, and there was a fair amount of reorganisation. The
NASU Institute of Mathematics was founded in Kyiv in 1934
and Grave served as the first director of the Institute from its foundation until his death in 1939. His work at the Institute of Mathematics was in addition to his chair at Kyiv University which he continued to hold.
Among the many books that Grave wrote were ''Theory of Finite Groups'' (1910) and ''A Course in Algebraic Analysis'' (1932). He also studied the history of algebraic analysis.
Among the honours that were given to him was election to the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in 1919, election to the
Shevchenko Scientific Society in 1923 and election to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1929.
References
McTutor biography
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Grave, Dmitry
1863 births
1939 deaths
Mathematicians from the Russian Empire
Soviet mathematicians
People from Kirillovsky District
People from Kirillovsky Uyezd
Ukrainian mathematicians
Members of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
NASU Institute of Mathematics
Academic staff of the National University of Kharkiv
Academic staff of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv
Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour
Burials at Lukianivka Cemetery