Pavel Alexandrov

Pavel Sergeyevich Alexandrov
Pavel Sergeyevich Alexandrov
Born	(1896-05-07)7 May 1896 Bogorodsk, Moscow Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	16 November 1982(1982-11-16) (aged 86) Moscow, Soviet Union
Nationality	Soviet Union
Fields	Mathematics
Alma mater	Moscow State University
Doctoral advisor	Dmitri Egorov Nikolai Luzin
Doctoral students	Aleksandr Kurosh Lev Pontryagin Andrey Tychonoff

Pavel Sergeyevich Alexandrov (Russian: Па́вел Серге́евич Алекса́ндров), sometimes romanized Aleksandroff or Aleksandrov (7 May 1896 – 16 November 1982), was a Soviet Russian mathematician. He wrote about three hundred papers, making important contributions to set theory and topology.

In topology, the Alexandroff compactification and the Alexandrov topology are named after him.

Alexandrov attended University of Göttingen in 1923 and 1924. After getting his Ph.D. in 1927, he continued to work at Moscow State University and also joined the Steklov Mathematical Institute. He made lifelong friends with Andrey Kolmogorov, about whom he said: "In 1979 this friendship [with Kolmogorov] celebrated its fiftieth anniversary and over the whole of this half century there was not only never any breach in it, there was also never any quarrel, in all this time there was never any misunderstanding between us on any question, no matter how important for our lives and our philosophy; even when our opinions on one of these questions differed, we showed complete understanding and sympathy for the views of each other."^[1] According to some researchers, the two were involved in a homosexual relationship in the 1930s,^[2]^[3] while others deny this and suppose that this rumour was spread in the 1950s in order to rehabilitate them as the participants of the Luzin affair.^[4]

Alexandrov was an active participant in the political offensive against Luzin which is known as the Luzin affair (1936).

He had a number of students, including Aleksandr Kurosh, Lev Pontryagin and Andrey Tychonoff. He was made a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1953.

Pavel Alexandrov should not be confused with Aleksandr Danilovich Aleksandrov, another mathematician at the Steklov Institute.

Honours and awards

Hero of Socialist Labour
Stalin Prize
Order of Lenin, six times (1946, 1953, 1961, 1966, 1969 and 1975)
Order of the October Revolution
Order of the Red Banner of Labour
Order of the Badge of Honour

Notes

^ Vitányi, P.M.B. (1988). "Andrei Nikolaevich Kolmogorov".
^ Lorentz, G.G. (December 2001). "Who Discovered Analytic Sets?".
^ Graham, Loren R.; Kantor, Jean-Michel (2009). Naming infinity: a true story of religious mysticism and mathematical creativity.
^ Kutateladze S.S., The Tragedy of Mathematics in Russia

External links

.
Pavel Alexandrov at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
The 1936 Luzin affair – from the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive
Lorentz G.G., Mathematics and Politics in the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1953
Kutateladze S.S., The Tragedy of Mathematics in Russia

Categories

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Pavel Alexandrov