Ivan Petrovsky

Ivan Georgievich Petrovsky, (Russian: Ива́н Гео́ргиевич Петро́вский) (18 January 1901 – 15 January 1973) (the family name is also transliterated as Petrovskii or Petrowsky), was a Soviet mathematician working mainly in the field of partial differential equations. He greatly contributed to the solution of Hilbert's 19th and 16th problems, and discovered what are now called Petrovsky lacunas. He also worked on the theories of boundary value problems, probability, and on the topology of algebraic curves and surfaces.

Biography

Petrovsky was a student of Dmitri Egorov. Among his students were Olga Ladyzhenskaya, Yevgeniy Landis, Olga Oleinik and Sergei Godunov.

Petrovsky taught at Steklov Institute of Mathematics. He was a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences since 1946 and was awarded Hero of Socialist Labor in 1969. He was the president of Moscow State University (1951–1973) and the head of the International Congress of Mathematicians (Moscow, 1966). He is buried in the cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent in Moscow.

Selected publications

• Petrovsky, I. G. (1937), "Über das Cauchysche Problem für Systeme von partiellen Differentialgleichungen", Recueil Mathématique (Matematicheskii Sbornik) (in German), 2 (44) (5): 815–870, JFM 63.0466.03, Zbl 0018.40503 .
• Petrovsky, I. G. (1939), "Sur l'analyticité des solutions des systèmes d'équations différentielles", Recueil Mathématique (Matematicheskii Sbornik) (in French), 5 (47) (1): 3–70, JFM 65.0405.02, MR 1425, Zbl 0022.22601 .
• Petrovsky, I. G. (1945), "On the diffusion of waves and the lacunas for hyperbolic equations", Recueil Mathématique (Matematicheskii Sbornik), 17 (59) (3): 289–368, MR 16861, Zbl 0061.21309 .
• Petrowsky, I. G. (1996), Oleinik, O. A., ed., Selected works. Part I: Systems of partial differential equations and algebraic geometry, Classics of Soviet Mathematics, 5 (part 1), Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Publishers, ISBN 2-88124-978-7, MR 1677652, Zbl 0948.01042 .
• Petrowsky, I. G. (1996), Oleinik, O. A., ed., Selected works. Part II: Differential equations and probability theory, Classics of Soviet Mathematics, 5 (part 2), Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Publishers, ISBN 2-88124-979-5, MR 1677648, Zbl 0948.01043 .

References

• Aleksandrov, P. S.; Arnol'd, V. I.; Gel'fand, I. M.; Kolmogorov, A. N.; Novikov, S. P.; Oleinik, O. A. (2001), "Ivan Georgievich Petrovskii", in Osipov, Yu. S.; Sadovnichii, V. A., Differential Equations and Related Topics - dedicated to the 100th Anniversary of I.G. Petrovskii, Moscow: Lomonosov State University and Steklov Mathematical Institute, pp. 1–18, retrieved 1 September 2009 . A very ample paper describing Petrovsky's scientific research, authored by friends, collaborators and pupils.
• Aleksandrov, P. S.; Oleinik, O. A. (1981), "On the eightieth anniversary of the birth of Ivan Georgievich Petrovskii", Uspekhi Matematicheskikh Nauk (in Russian), 36 (1(217)): 3–10, MR 0608939, Zbl 0454.01022, doi:10.1070/rm1981v036n01abeh002539 : the original paper translated in (Alexandrov & Oleinik 1996), and also in the Russian Mathematical Surveys, 1981, 36:1, 1–8.
• Alexandrov, P. S.; Oleinik, O. A. (1996), "Ivan Georgievich Petrowsky", in Oleinik, O. A., Selected works. Part II: Differential equations and probability theory, Classics of Soviet Mathematics, 5 (part 2), Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Publishers, pp. 1–9, ISBN 2-88124-979-5, MR 1677648, Zbl 0948.01043 : an English translation of the paper (Aleksandrov & Oleinik 1981).
• Kolmogorov, A. N. (1996), "Ivan Georgievich Petrowsky", in Oleinik, O. A., Selected works. Part I: Systems of partial differential equations and algebraic geometry, Classics of Soviet Mathematics, 5 (part 1), Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Publishers, pp. 1–3, ISBN 2-88124-978-7, MR 1677652, Zbl 0948.01042 
• Lui, S. H. (1997), "An Interview with Vladimir Arnol´d" (PDF), Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 44 (4): 432–438, Zbl 0913.01024 . An interview with Vladimir Igorevich Arnol'd containing several important historical details about his teachers and other great mathematicians he knew when he was first studying and then working at the MSU Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics, including Ivan Petrowsky.
• Oleinik, O. A. (1996), "I. G. Petrowsky and Modern Mathematics", in Oleinik, O. A., Selected works. Part I: Systems of partial differential equations and algebraic geometry, Classics of Soviet Mathematics, 5 (part 1), Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Publishers, pp. 4–30, ISBN 2-88124-978-7, MR 1677652, Zbl 0948.01042 

• Gårding, L. (1996), "Ivan Georgievich Petrowsky and Partial Differential Equations", in Oleinik, O. A., Selected works. Part I: Systems of partial differential equations and algebraic geometry, Classics of Soviet Mathematics, 5 (part 1), Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Publishers, pp. 31–39, ISBN 2-88124-978-7, MR 1677652, Zbl 0948.01042 .
• Vol'pert, A. I. (1996), "Propagation of Waves Described by Nonlinear Parabolic Equations (a commentary on article 6)", in Oleinik, O. A., Selected works. Part II: Differential equations and probability theory, Classics of Soviet Mathematics, 5 (part 2), Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Publishers, pp. 364–399, ISBN 2-88124-979-5, MR 1677648, Zbl 0948.01043 

External links

• Ivan Petrovsky at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Ivan Petrovsky", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews .
• Short Biography of Petrowsky – from the Moscow Mathematical Journal