Lew Genrichowitsch Schnirelman

Lev Schnirelmann (also Schnirelmann ; Russian Лев Генрихович Шнирельман born January 2, ^jul. / 15. January 1905 ^greg. In Gomel ; † 24. September 1938 in Moscow ) was a Soviet mathematician who with additive number theory and differential geometry employed.

Schnirelmann was the son of a teacher, showed mathematical talent at an early age and began studying mathematics at Lomonossow University in Moscow as early as 1921 , where he heard from Alexander Chintschin , Pavel Urysohn and Nikolai Lusin . In 1929 he taught mathematics at the Polytechnic Institute in Novocherkassk . In 1930 he was again at the University of Moscow and in 1931 at the University of Göttingen with Edmund Landau . In 1933 he was elected as a corresponding member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and taught at its Mathematical Institute from 1934 . In 1935 he was appointed head of the newly established Chair of Number Theory at the Faculty of Mathematics and Mechanics at Lomonosov University. In 1938 Schnirelman committed suicide (according to Lew Pontryagin in his memoirs). Immediately beforehand he had been summoned for an interrogation by the NKVD .

In the late 1920s he worked with Lasar Ljusternik on topological methods in the calculus of variations , solving, among other things, Poincaré's problem about the existence of at least three closed geodetic curves on convex closed surfaces in three-dimensional space. Previously, George David Birkhoff , whose methods they generalized, had shown the existence of a geodetic. The field of work thus opened is called the Ljusternik-Schnirelmann theory (in the topology the Ljusternik-Schnirelmann categories of closed sets are named after both ).

His work on additive number theory was also groundbreaking , where he introduced the Schnirelmann density and thus proved a proposition in the direction of Goldbach's hypothesis : Every natural number is the sum of less than 21 prime numbers (Mathematische Annalen 1933 and lecture at the German Congress of Mathematicians 1931) . According to Goldbach's conjecture (which Schnirelmann aimed to prove), a maximum of three prime numbers are sufficient.

Web links

John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson : Lew Genrichowitsch Schnirelman. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
WM Tichomirow , WA Uspenski : Lev Genrikhovich Schnirel'mann (English, translated from Kvant 1996)
L. Schnirelmann: About additive properties of numbers . In: Mathematical Annals . tape 107 , 1933, pp. 649-690 ( online [accessed February 24, 2019]).

Sources and Notes

^ Corresponding members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724: Schnirelman, Lew Genrichowitsch. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed February 23, 2019 (in Russian).
↑ This emerges from the files of the trial for the Lusin affair , see G. Lorentz, PDF file . According to Lorentz, this indicates that the NKVD wanted to penetrate through Schnirelmann into the otherwise difficult-to-access circle of academy members.

personal data
SURNAME	Schnirelman, Lew Genrichowitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Schnirelmann, Lew; Шнирельман, Лев Генрихович (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Soviet mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH	January 15, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH	Gomel , Mogilev Governorate , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH	September 24, 1938
Place of death	Moscow , Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic , Soviet Union

[1] Corresponding members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724: Schnirelman, Lew Genrichowitsch. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed February 23, 2019 (in Russian).

[2] This emerges from the files of the trial for the Lusin affair , see G. Lorentz, PDF file . According to Lorentz, this indicates that the NKVD wanted to penetrate through Schnirelmann into the otherwise difficult-to-access circle of academy members.