Eugene Dynkin

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Eugene Borisovich Dynkin (Russian: Евгений Борисович Дынкин; born May 11, 1924) is a Russian mathematician. He has made contributions to the fields of probability and algebra, especially semisimple Lie groups, Lie algebras, and Markov processes. The Dynkin diagram, the Dynkin system, and Dynkin's lemma are named for him.

Dynkin lived in Leningrad until 1935, when his father was declared "enemy of the people" and the family was exiled to Kazakhstan. At the age of 16, in 1940, despite his father's political difficulties, Dynkin enrolled at Moscow University. He avoided military service in World War II because of his poor eyesight, and received his M.S. in 1945 and his Ph.D. in 1948. He became an assistant professor at Moscow, but was not awarded a "chair" until 1954 because of his political undesirability.

In 1967 Dynkin signed a petition letter in defense of Yuri Galanskov and Alexander Ginzburg. As a result, in 1968 Dynkin was forced to transfer from the Moscow University to the Central Economics and Mathematics Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He worked there on the theory of economic growth and economic equilibrium. He remained at the Institute until 1976, when he emigrated to the United States. He became a professor at Cornell University, where he remains as of 2008.

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