Alekandrov

Pavel Sergeevich Alekandrov

Born: 7 May 1896 in Bogorodsk (also called Noginsk), Russia
Died: 16 Nov 1982 in Moscow, USSR

Previous (Chronologically) Next     Biographies Index

Previous ( Alphabetically) Next          Welcome page
Alekandrov attended Moscow University and became Luzin's first student in 1915. He proved an important result but then, after failing to prove the continuum hypothesis (not surprising since it can neither be proved or disproved) he thought he was not capable of a mathematical career and became a theatre producer. After a short term in jail in 1919 at the time of the Russian revolution, Alekandrov returned to Moscow University to resume his studies.

Alekandrov studied with Urysohn, a fellow student, and they produced impressive results. The notion of a compact space and a locally compact space is due to them. They visited Göttingen and impressed Emmy Noether, Courant and Hilbert with their results on when a metric space is metrizable. They also visited Hausdorff in Bonn and Brouwer in Holland in 1926.

Alekandrov became close friends with Hopf and Kolmogorov. He laid the foundations of homotopy theory and was the first to use the phrase 'kernel of a homomorphism'.

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. Pavel Sergeevich Alekandrov, Russian Mathematical Surveys 31 (1976), 1-13. 
Previous (Chronologically) Next     Biographies Index

Previous ( Alphabetically) Next          Welcome page

History Topics Index              Famous curves index

Chronologies                           Birthplace Map

Mathematicians of the day  Anniversaries for the year

Search Form   Simple Search Form   Search Suggestions
JOC/EFR February 1996