Pavel Alexandrov

For Russian footballer, see Pavel Aleksandrov (footballer).

Pavel Sergeyevich Alexandrov
Pavel Sergeyevich Alexandrov
Born	May 7, 1896(1896-05-07) Bogorodsk, Moscow Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	November 16, 1982(1982-11-16) (aged 86) Moscow, Soviet Union
Nationality	Soviet Union
Fields	Mathematics
Alma mater	Moscow State University
Doctoral advisor	Dmitri Egorov Nikolai Luzin
Doctoral students	Aleksandr Kurosh Lev Pontryagin Andrey Tychonoff

Pavel Sergeyevich Alexandrov (Russian: Па́вел Серге́евич Алекса́ндров), sometimes romanized Aleksandroff or Aleksandrov (May 7, 1896–November 16, 1982) was a Soviet Russian mathematician. He wrote about three hundred papers, making important contributions to set theory and topology.

In topology, the Alexandroff compactification and the Alexandrov topology are named after him.

Alexandrov attended Moscow State University where he was a student of Dmitri Egorov and Nikolai Luzin. Together with Pavel Urysohn, he visited the University of Göttingen in 1923 and 1924. After getting his Ph.D. in 1927, he continued to work at Moscow State University and also joined the Steklov Mathematical Institute. He made lifelong friends with Andrey Kolmogorov, about whom he said: "in 1979 this friendship [with Kolmogorov] celebrated its fiftieth anniversary and over the whole of this half century there was not only never any breach in it, there was also never any quarrel, in all this time there was never any misunderstanding between us on any question, no matter how important for our lives and our philosophy; even when our opinions on one of these questions differed, we showed complete understanding and sympathy for the views of each other."^[1]

Alexandrov was an active participant in the political offensive against Luzin which is known as the Luzin affair (1936).

He had a number of students, including Aleksandr Kurosh, Lev Pontryagin and Andrey Tychonoff. He was made a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1953.

Some researchers speculated that he was homosexual.^[2][3]

Pavel Alexandrov should not be confused with Aleksandr Danilovich Aleksandrov, another mathematician at the Steklov Institute.

Honours and awards

This article incorporates information from the Russian Wikipedia.

• Hero of Socialist Labour
• Stalin Prize
• Order of Lenin, six times (1946, 1953, 1961, 1966, 1969 and 1975)
• Order of the October Revolution
• Order of the Red Banner of Labour
• Order of the Badge of Honour

Notes

1. ^ Vitányi, P.M.B. (1988). "Andrei Nikolaevich Kolmogorov". CWI Quarterly (Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica) 1 (2): 3–18. http://repository.cwi.nl/search/fullrecord.php?publnr=2429. 
2. ^ Lorentz, G.G. (December 2001). "Who Discovered Analytic Sets?". The Mathematical Intelligencer 23 (4): 31. doi:10.1007/BF03024600. http://www.springerlink.com/content/0511u5425426r48k/. "In Leningrad, many mathematicians believed that Aleksandrov was homosexual..." 
3. ^ Graham, Loren R.; Kantor, Jean-Michel (2009). Naming infinity: a true story of religious mysticism and mathematical creativity. Harvard University Press. p. 185. ISBN 9780674032934. "The police soon learned of Kolmogorov and Alexandrov's homosexual bond, and they used that knowledge to obtain the behavior that they wished." 

External links

• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Pavel Alexandrov", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews, http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Aleksandrov.html .
• Pavel Alexandrov at the Mathematics Genealogy Project.
• The 1936 Luzin affair – from the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive
• Lorentz G.G., Mathematics and Politics in the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1953
• Kutateladze S.S., The Tragedy of Mathematics in Russia

Persondata
Name	Alexandrov, Pavel Sergeyevich
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	May 7, 1896
Place of birth	Bogorodsk, Moscow Governorate, Russian Empire
Date of death	November 16, 1982
Place of death	Moscow, Soviet Union