Vladimir Andreyevich Steklov

Vladrimir A. Steklow

Vladimir Steklov ( Russian Владимир Андреевич Стеклов , scientific. Transliteration Vladimir Steklov Andreevič ; December 28 * 1863 ^{. Jul} / 9. January  1864 ^greg. In Nizhny Novgorod , † the thirtieth May 1926 in Haspra on the Crimea ) was a Russian and Soviet Mathematician who dealt with differential equations and mathematical physics ( hydrodynamics , elasticity theory ).

Steklov was the son of a clergyman who taught at the seminary in Nizhny Novgorod. He attended the Alexander Institute in his hometown until 1884 and then studied mathematics at the Lomonossow University in Moscow , but after a year he switched to the Karasin University in Kharkov , where he studied with Alexander Mikhailovich Lyapunov and graduated in 1887. In 1891 he became a lecturer in mechanics at his university, and in 1893 he received his doctorate under Lyapunov (thesis). In his dissertation he solved an integrable case, left open by Alfred Clebsch, of the equations of motion of a rigid body in an ideal liquid - Lyapunov himself treated a fourth integrable case. In 1896 he became an associate professor and in 1902 he received his Russian doctorate (candidate) with a thesis on Boundary value problems of potential theory. In the same year he became a professor of applied mathematics as the successor to his teacher Lyapunov, who went to St. Petersburg . In 1906 he became a professor in St. Petersburg. There he was a very popular teacher (with sympathy for the opponents of the tsarist regime). His students included Alexander Alexandrowitsch Friedmann , Wladimir Ivanovich Smirnow and Jakob Davidowitsch Tamarkin .

Steklov (the nephew of a well-known literary critic) also wrote literary works (biographies about Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov and Galileo Galilei and a book about a trip to the USA in 1925) and kept a detailed diary for 20 years that has survived. In 1910 he was elected to the Russian Academy of Sciences , and in 1919 he became its vice-president, who administered it during the difficult times of the civil war. In 1921 he founded the Institute for Physics and Mathematics, of which he was director until his death. In 1926 he was elected a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences . After his death in 1934, the Mathematics Institute was named after him ( Steklow Institute ).

Steklow was particularly concerned with series developments of functions in mathematical physics according to orthogonal systems of eigenfunctions. He developed a general theory of such “fundamental solutions” in his candidate thesis of 1901.

Web links

Commons : Vladimir Andreevich Steklov  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson :  Wladimir Andrejewitsch Steklow. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
• Nikolay Kuznetsov u. a. The legacy of Vladimir Andreevich Steklov, Notices AMS, January 2014

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 232.