Mathematician:Mathematicians/Sorted By Nation/Russia
For more comprehensive information on the lives and works of mathematicians through the ages, see the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, created by John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson.
- The army of those who have made at least one definite contribution to mathematics as we know it soon becomes a mob as we look back over history; 6,000 or 8,000 names press forward for some word from us to preserve them from oblivion, and once the bolder leaders have been recognised it becomes largely a matter of arbitrary, illogical legislation to judge who of the clamouring multitude shall be permitted to survive and who be condemned to be forgotten.
- -- Eric Temple Bell: Men of Mathematics, 1937, Victor Gollancz, London
Russia
Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky $($$\text {1792}$ – $\text {1856}$$)$
Known as "the Copernicus of geometry", for his development of a non-Euclidean geometry, that is, one which does not use the parallel postulate.
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Pafnuty Lvovich Chebyshev $($$\text {1821}$ – $\text {1894}$$)$
Russian mathematician whose work was mainly in the fields of probability, statistics and number theory.
He is best known for proving Bertrand's Postulate in $1850$. It has since been known as the Bertrand-Chebyshev Theorem.
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Ivan Mikheevich Pervushin $($$\text {1827}$ – $\text {1900}$$)$
Russian priest, who worked in number theory in his spare time.
Most famous for demonstrating the primality of the Mersenne number $M_{61}$, which then became known as Pervushin's number.
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Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor $($$\text {1845}$ – $\text {1918}$$)$
Russian-born German mathematician widely regarded as the creator of set theory.
He established the importance of correspondence between sets and helped to define the concepts of infinity and well-ordered sets.
He is also famous for stating and proving Cantor's Theorem.
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Sofia Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya $($$\text {1850}$ – $\text {1891}$$)$
In Russian: Со́фья Васи́льевна Ковале́вская.
The first female Russian mathematician of record.
Made contributions to analysis, differential equations and mechanics.
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Evgraf Stepanovich Fedorov $($$\text {1853}$ – $\text {1919}$$)$
Russian mathematician, crystallographer and mineralogist.
Best known in the mathematics world for enumerating the $3$-dimensional space groups, now known as the Fedorov groups.
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Andrey Andreyevich Markov $($$\text {1856}$ – $\text {1922}$$)$
Russian mathematician best known for his work on stochastic processes.
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Aleksandr Mikhailovich Lyapunov $($$\text {1857}$ – $\text {1918}$$)$
Russian mathematician, mechanician and physicist, known for his development of the stability theory of a dynamical system, as well as for his many contributions to mathematical physics and probability theory.
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Dmitri Fyodorovich Egorov $($$\text {1869}$ – $\text {1931}$$)$
Russian mathematician noted for his contributions to differential geometry and analysis.
His religious views caused him to fall foul of the Soviet regime and he died as a result of a hunger strike he embarked upon while in prison for being a "religious sectarian".
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Vladimir Andreyevich Markov $($$\text {1871}$ – $\text {1897}$$)$
Russian mathematician noted for the solution of the Markov Brothers' Inequality, with his elder brother Andrey Andreyevich Markov.
Died of tuberculosis at the tragically young age of 25.
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Sergei Natanovich Bernstein $($$\text {1880}$ – $\text {1968}$$)$
Russian mathematician known for contributions to partial differential equations, differential geometry, probability theory, and approximation theory
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Yakov Isidorovich Perelman $($$\text {1882}$ – $\text {1942}$$)$
Russian and Soviet science writer and author of many popular science books, including Physics for Entertainment and Mathematics Can Be Fun.
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Solomon Lefschetz $($$\text {1884}$ – $\text {1972}$$)$
Russian-born American mathematician who did fundamental work on algebraic topology, its applications to algebraic geometry, and the theory of non-linear ordinary differential equations.
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Vladimir Ivanovich Smirnov $($$\text {1887}$ – $\text {1974}$$)$
Russian mathematician who contributed significantly to several areas of pure and applied mathematics. Best known for his 5-volume textbook A Course in Higher Mathematics which was widely used.
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Ivan Matveevich Vinogradov $($$\text {1891}$ – $\text {1983}$$)$
One of the creators of the field of analytic number theory.
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Aleksandr Yakovlevich Khinchin $($$\text {1894}$ – $\text {1959}$$)$
Russian mathematician who was an important figure in the field of probability theory.
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Semen Samsonovich Kovner $($$\text {1896}$ – $\text {1962}$$)$
Russian mathematician working in analysis.
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Pavel Sergeyevich Alexandrov $($$\text {1896}$ – $\text {1982}$$)$
Russian mathematician who made considerable contributions in the fields of set theory and topology.
The first to introduce the concept of a kernel of a homomorphism.
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Oscar Zariski $($$\text {1899}$ – $\text {1986}$$)$
Russian-born mathematician, highly influential in the fields of algebraic geometry and topology.
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Nikolai Vasilyevich Smirnov $($$\text {1900}$ – $\text {1966}$$)$
Russian mathematician noted for his work in various fields including probability theory and statistics.
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Viktor Vladimirovich Nemytskii $($$\text {1900}$ – $\text {1967}$$)$
Soviet mathematician who introduced Nemytskii operators and the Niemytzki plane.
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Albert Parry $($$\text {1901}$ – $\text {1992}$$)$
Russian-born academic and historian who was the translator into English of Boris A. Kordemsky's $1956$ collection Математическая смекалка.
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Semyon Aranovich Gershgorin $($$\text {1901}$ – $\text {1933}$$)$
Russian mathematician best known for the Gershgorin Circle Theorem.
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Henrietta O. Midonick $($$\text {c. 1903}$ – $\text {1985}$$)$
Russian mathematician best known for writing The Treasury of Mathematics.
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Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov $($$\text {1903}$ – $\text {1987}$$)$
Russian mathematician active in various fields, including probability theory, topology and intuitionistic logic.
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Andrey Andreyevich Markov Jr. $($$\text {1903}$ – $\text {1979}$$)$
Soviet mathematician working in the fields of topology, mathematical logic and several others.
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Alexander Osipovich Gelfond $($$\text {1906}$ – $\text {1968}$$)$
Russian mathematician and prolific writer (Russian: Алекса́ндр О́сипович Ге́льфонд) best known for the Gelfond-Schneider Theorem.
Established in $1929$ that $e^\pi$ is transcendental.
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Andrey Nikolayevich Tychonoff $($$\text {1906}$ – $\text {1993}$$)$
Russian mathematician best known for his work in topology.
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Emma Markovna Lehmer $($$\text {1906}$ – $\text {2007}$$)$
Russian-born mathematician active mainly in the field of number theory.
The wife of Derrick Henry ("Dick") Lehmer, with whom she was a frequent collaborator.
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Boris Anastasyevich Kordemsky $($$\text {1907}$ – $\text {1999}$$)$
Russian mathematician and educator, best known for his popular science books and mathematical puzzles.
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Meyer Abraham Girshick $($$\text {1908}$ – $\text {1955}$$)$
Russian mathematician who worked in game theory.
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Lev Semenovich Pontryagin $($$\text {1908}$ – $\text {1988}$$)$
Russian mathematician who made major discoveries, mainly in the field of geometric topology.
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Sergei Lvovich Sobolev $($$\text {1908}$ – $\text {1989}$$)$
Russian mathematician who worked mainly in the fields of analysis and partial differential equations.
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Boris Vladimirovich Gnedenko $($$\text {1912}$ – $\text {1995}$$)$
Soviet mathematician best known for his contributions to the study of probability theory, particularly extreme value theory.
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Georgi Evgen'evich Shilov $($$\text {1917}$ – $\text {1975}$$)$
Russian mathematician, expert in the field of functional analysis, who contributed to the theory of normed rings and generalized functions.
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U.S.S.R.
Sergei Vasilovich Fomin $($$\text {1917}$ – $\text {1975}$$)$
Russian mathematician best known for his contribution towards the book Introductory Real Analysis.
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Leon Mirsky $($$\text {1918}$ – $\text {1983}$$)$
Russian-born mathematician who worked mainly in the fields of number theory, linear algebra and combinatorics.
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Isaac Asimov $($$\text {1920}$ – $\text {1992}$$)$
Russian-born professor of biochemistry, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books.
One of the most hugely prolific and influential writers of all time.
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Victor Abramovich Zalgaller $($$\text {1920}$ – $\text {2020}$$)$
Russian mathematician, working in the fields of geometry and optimization.
Best known for his results on convex polyhedra, linear and dynamic programming, isoperimetry, and differential geometry.
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Yurii Mikhailovich Smirnov $($$\text {1921}$ – $\text {2007}$$)$
Russian mathematician who specialised in topology.
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Olga Aleksandrovna Ladyzhenskaya $($$\text {1922}$ – $\text {2004}$$)$
Russian mathematician known for her work on partial differential equations (especially Hilbert's nineteenth problem) and fluid dynamics.
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Maks Aizikovich Akivis $($$\text {b. 1923}$$)$
Russian mathematician who worked mainly in the fields of differential geometry and linear algebra.
Student of Israel Moiseevich Gelfand.
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Eugene Borisovich Dynkin $($$\text {1924}$ – $\text {2014}$$)$
Russian mathematician whose work is in probability and algebra.
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Nikolai Makarovich Nagorny $($$\text {1928}$ – $\text {2007}$$)$
Russian mathematician who wrote on the subject of algorithm theory.
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Yakov Grigorevich Sinai $($$\text {b. 1935}$$)$
Russian-American mathematician known for his work on dynamical systems.
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Sergei Petrovich Novikov $($$\text {b. 1938}$$)$
Russian mathematician noted for work in both algebraic topology and soliton theory.
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Mikhael Leonidovich Gromov $($$\text {b. 1943}$$)$
Russian-French mathematician known for his work in geometry, analysis and group theory.
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Aleksandr Yuryevich Olshansky $($$\text {b. 1946}$$)$
Russian mathematician working in the field of combinatorial and geometric group theory.
Also working on Lie algebras and associative algebras.
Disproved the Von Neumann Conjecture.
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Grigory Aleksandrovich Margulis $($$\text {b. 1946}$$)$
Russian mathematician known for his work on lattices in Lie groups, and the introduction of methods from ergodic theory into Diophantine approximation.
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Yuri Vladimirovich Matiyasevich $($$\text {b. 1947}$$)$
Russian mathematician most famous for proving that Hilbert's Tenth Problem is Unsolvable.
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Svetlana Katok $($$\text {b. 1947}$$)$
Russian-American mathematician whose interests include automorphic forms, analysis on Riemannian manifolds and symmetric spaces, hyperbolic geometry and Fuchsian groups, and application of dynamical systems to analysis and number theory.
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Alexander Bogomolny $($$\text {1948}$ – $\text {2018}$$)$
Soviet-born American-Israeli mathematician who was creator and custodian of https://www.cut-the-knot.org/ which won awards.
Wrote extensively about arithmetic, probability, algebra, geometry, trigonometry and mathematical games.
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Grigori Yakovlevich Perelman $($$\text {b. 1966}$$)$
Russian mathematician famous for solving Thurston's Geometrization Conjecture, and hence completing the proof of the Poincaré Conjecture.
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