Alexei Zinovievich Petrov

Alexei Zinovievich Petrov ( Russian Алексей Зиновьевич Петров , English transliteration Alexey Zinovievich Petrov; born October 28, 1910 in Koschki, Samara Governorate ; † May 9, 1972 in Kiev ) was a Russian mathematician and theoretical classification of, precisely known for his theoretical solutions of general relativity .

Live and act

Petrov was born the eleventh of twelve children of a village chaplain. He lost his father at an early age and his mother and his younger brother gave him to an aunt after the house had burned down. For financial reasons he had to break off his training as a teacher and worked as a carpenter and then in 1931 with his brother on the construction of a power plant in Kazan , while at the same time preparing himself for the entrance exams at the university. From 1932 he studied mathematics and physics at the University of Kazan, among others with Chebotaryov and Schirokow , in which he later found his main field of work, the differential geometric investigation of problems in general relativity (theory of so-called Einstein spaces). After that, he worked as a teacher while working on his doctorate. In 1941 he commanded a mortar battery outside Moscow and was therefore only able to defend his doctorate in 1943 on a short leave from the front. In the same year he was badly wounded and discharged from the army. He taught at the Aviation School in Kazan and then at the University.

He is known for his algebraic classification ("Petrow classification") of Einstein spaces (that is, the curvature tensor for the case of matter-free Einstein spaces), which he achieved from 1952 to 1954. In 1957 he completed his habilitation at Lomonossow University in Moscow (Russian doctorate). Despite serious health problems ( myocarditis ) that forced him to stay in hospital for long periods, he devoted himself to research against medical advice. In 1956 he became professor for geometry in Kazan and in 1960 professor at the newly created chair for relativity theory and gravitational physics. He represented the subject area as a science organizer both nationally and internationally as a representative of the Soviet Union in the International Committee for Relativity and Gravitation. In 1969 he was elected to the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and from 1970 was head of the Relativity and Gravitation Department at the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the Academy in Kiev. There, too, he was often in the hospital and died as a result of an operation.

Fonts

• Space, Time and Matter , 1961 (Russian, popular science)
• Einstein Rooms , Akademie Verlag 1964 (published by Hans-Jürgen Treder ), Russian original Moscow 1961
• New methods of general relativity , Russian, Moscow, Nauka 1966
• Classification of spaces defined by gravitational fields (Russian), Uch. Zapiski Kazan Gos. Univ. (Scientific Treatises of Kazan State University), Vol. 114, 1954, pp. 55-69
  • English translation "Classification of spaces defined by gravitational fields". General Relativity and Gravitation, Vol. 22, 2000, p. 1665, also reprinted in George FR Ellis , Malcolm AH MacCallum, Andrzej Krasinski (eds.) Golden Oldies in General Relativity. Hidden Gems , Springer Verlag 2013, with a biography of Petrow by Asya Aminova

Web links

• Biography, English
• To the Petrov classification, English