Nikolay Bogolyubov

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Nikolai Nikolaevich Bogoliubov, (Russian: Николай Николаевич Боголюбов, Ukrainian: Микола Миколайович Боголюбов) (21 August 1909, Nizhny Novgorod – 13 February 1992, Moscow) was a Russian-Ukrainian mathematician and theoretical physicist known for his work in statistical field theory and dynamical systems. He was awarded the Dirac Medal in 1992. He was a student of Nikolay Mitrofanovich Krylov.

He was born in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. His family moved to Kiev in 1921, where after graduation from a high school Nikolai began independent study of mathematics and physics, participating in seminars at Kiev University. In 1924 he wrote his first published scientific paper. In 1925 he entered Ph.D. program at the Academy of Science of Ukrainian SSR, from which he graduated in 1929.

Krylov and Bogoliubov are key figures in what has been called the Kiev School of nonlinear oscillation research. Their cooperation resulted in the paper "On the quasiperiodic solutions of the equations of nonlinear mechanics" in 1934 and the book Introduction to nonlinear mechanics in 1937 (translated into English in 1947). Distinctive features of the Kiev School approach were: an emphasis on the computation of solutions (not just proof of existence), on the approximation of periodic solutions, on invariant manifolds in phase space, and on applying similar methods to many different applications.

From a control engineering point of view, the key achievement of the Kiev School was the development of the describing function method for the analysis of nonlinear control problems.

In the late 1940s and '50s Bogoliubov worked on the theory of superfluidity and superconductivity. Later he worked on quantum field theory, and introduced the Bogoliubov transformation. In the 1960s his attention turned to the quark model of hadrons; in 1965 he was one of the first to study the new quantum number color charge.

For his work, Bogolyubov was awarded some of the highest honors in the Soviet Union: the Hero of Socialist Labor (1969, 1979), Lenin Prize (1958), USSR State Prize (1947, 1953, 1984), and Lomonosov Gold Medal (1985).