Lev Semenovich Pontryagin

Lev Semenovich Pontryagin was born Sept. 3, 1908.

In 1929 he graduated from Moscow University and has over forty years working at the Mathematical Institute in the name. A. Steklov Mathematical Sciences of the USSR, which now heads the Department of ordinary differential equations.

L. S. Pontryagin - mathematician generalist. He owns the fundamental results in topology and algebra. Since his name is associated with rapidly developing direction of algebraic and differential topology.

Pontryagin made a great contribution to the theory of ordinary differential equations and dynamical systems. He and his school, a mathematical theory of optimal processes. The underlying theory of the Pontryagin maximum principle is of great practical importance.

He succeeded, imposing on the topological-algebraic object constraints (axioms) of a very general nature, to come to a very specific mathematical concepts. For example, a continuous algebraic body, if it is compact connected and locally isomorphic to either the body of real numbers, or the body of complex numbers, quaternions or the body (the result obtained in the early 1930's). Later they found one correspondence between commutative compact topological and discrete groups through a group of characters.

He is known as the author of several well-known monographs and textbooks.

L. S. Pontryagin - Academician of the USSR, Lenin Prize, Hero of Socialist Labor, one of the greatest mathematicians of our time.

His work has received international recognition: he is vice-president of the International Mathematical Union.