Person: Kagan, Benjamin Fedorovich

Benjamin Kagan was a Russian and Soviet mathematician who woked on non-Euclidean geometry.

Kagan entered Novorossysky University in Odessa in 1887.
In 1892 Kagan received a degree from Kiev University, then in 1895 he was awarded a Master's Degree by St Petersburg University.
As if this was not enough, Kagan also edited the Journal of Experimental Physics and Elementary Mathematics from 1902 until 1917 and he was the director of a large publisher of scientific materials Mathesis.
Kagan was the first Head of Department and he founded an important School of Differential Geometry.
In 1927, Kagan organised a seminar on vector and tensor analysis.
In 1934 Kagan and other members of his School organised an International conference on differential geometry which took place at Moscow University.
Kagan worked on the foundations of geometry and his first work was on Lobachevsky's geometry.
Kagan studied tensor differential geometry after going to Moscow because of an interest in relativity.
Kagan wrote a history of non-euclidean geometry and also a detailed biography of Lobachevsky.

Born 10 March 1869, Shavli, Kovno (now Kaunas, Lithuania). Died 8 May 1953, Moscow, USSR.

View full biography at MacTutor

Origin Lithuania

Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0!

O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive