Valentina Borok

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Valentina Mikhailovna Borok (9 July 1931, Kharkiv, Ukraine–4 February 2004, Haifa, Israel) was a Ukrainian mathematician. She is mainly known for her work on partial differential equations.

[edit] Life

Borok was born in 1931 in Kharkiv in Ukraine. Her father, Michail Borok, was a chemist, scientist and an expert in material science. Her mother, the jewish Bella Sigal, was a well-known economist. Because of her mothers' high position at the ministry of Economics, she had a privileged early childhood. Because of the political situation, her mother voluntarily resigned in 1937 and took a lower position, presumably because she hoped it would make them safer. It is believed it helped the Borok family survive World War II.

In 1949, Borok started to study Mathematics at Kiev State University. There she met Yakov Zhitomirskii, who would be her husband until her death. In 1954, she graduated and moved to Moscow State University. In 1957, she received her PhD for her thesis On Systems of Linear Partial Differential Equations with Constant Coefficients. In 1960, she moved to Kharkiv State University, where she stayed until 1994.

In 1994, Borok became ill and moved to Haifa, Israel, because medical treatment was not possible in Ukraine. She died at the age of 72 in 2004.