Person: Dynkin, Eugene Borisovich
Eugene B Dynkin was a Russian-born American mathematician who worked in the fields of probability and algebra, especially semisimple Lie groups and algebras, and Markov processes. Dynkin diagrams are named after him.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- Things looked particularly bleak for Dynkin at this stage.
- Only special efforts by A N Kolmogorov, who put, more than once, his influence at stake, made it possible for me to progress through the graduate school to a teaching position at Moscow University.
- His work at this time was partly in algebra and partly in probability.
- At this time he discovered the 'Dynkin diagram' approach to the classification of the semisimple Lie algebras.
- This work came out of Dynkin trying to understand the papers by Weyl and by van der Waerden on semisimple Lie groups.
- Dynkin was not the only person to introduce graph of this type.
- After graduating, Dynkin remained at Moscow University where he became a research student of Kolmogorov.
- For ten years he worked both on the theory of Lie algebras and on probability theory although his main work during this period was in algebra.
- In 1945 he solved a problem on Markov chains suggested by Kolmogorov and his first publication in probability resulted.
- In 1948 Dynkin was awarded his Ph.D. and he became an assistant professor of Kolmogorov's who held the Probability Chair.
- Dynkin became Doctor of Physics and Mathematics in 1951 and Kolmogorov pressed for Dynkin to be awarded a chair.
- However there was no way that the Communist Party leaders of Moscow University would allow a person of Dynkin's background to hold a chair at this time.
- The following year, with Kolmogorov's strong support, Dynkin was appointed to a chair at the University of Moscow and he held this chair until 1968.
- From the time he was appointed to the chair, Dynkin's work became more and more devoted to probability theory.
- His work from this period is contained in two major books Foundations of the Theory of Markov Processes (1959) and Markov Processes (1963) which have become classics of probability theory.
- During his short spell of work there he organized a group of young workers together with whom he obtained important results in the theory of economic growth and economic equilibrium that culminated in the first Soviet report on this topic at the International Mathematics Congress in Vancouver (to which, incidentally, in the usual way, he was not allowed to go).
- The decision to leave was very hard: pupils, friends, and youth were left behind.
- To apply for emigration was a great risk, especially for an outstanding scientist: many such applicants have been denied exit visas, they have lost their jobs and lived for years as outcasts of Soviet society.
- In 1977 Dynkin was appointed to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
- In his hands it became a remarkable relation between occupation times of a Markov process and a related Gaussian random field.
- This identity has led to many deep studies, by Dynkin himself as well as a host of others ...
- In the last few years Dynkin has obtained exciting results in the theory of "superprocesses" ...
- Dynkin has been awarded many prizes for his outstanding contributions.
- He has been elected as a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (1962) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1978).
- In 1985 he was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States.
- in recognition of Dynkin's foundational contributions to two areas of mathematics over a long period and his production of outstanding research students in both countries to whose mathematical life he contributed so richly.
- Dynkin's most famous contribution to the theory of Lie algebras was his use of the "Coxeter-Dynkin diagrams" to describe and classify the Cartan matrices of semisimple Lie algebras.
- This work was done while Dynkin was still a student at Moscow University.
- Dynkin has laid much of the foundations of the general theory of Markov processes as we know it today.
- Dynkin proved the measurability of certain hitting times ....
- He developed the semigroup theory of Markov processes and characterized Markov processes by the generator of their semigroup.
- He also showed the usefulness of what is now known as "Dynkin's formula".
- This formula, which expresses expectations of functionals of the Markov process as an integral involving its generator, has become a standard and indispensable tool which is still used all the time.
- Dynkin further studied such topics as excessive functions, Martin boundary, additive functionals, entrance and exit laws, random time change, control theory, and mathematical economics.
- Around 1980 Dynkin interpreted and vastly generalized an identity which had first come up in the context of quantum field theory.
- In his hands it became a remarkable relation between occupation times of a Markov process and a related Gaussian random field.
- This identity has led to many deep studies, by Dynkin himself as well as a host of others, of the properties of local times of Markov processes as well as to the detailed study of multiple points or self-intersections of Brownian motion.
- In the last few years Dynkin has obtained exciting results in the theory of "superprocesses".
- This is a class of measure-valued Markov processes, which in many cases can be constructed as a suitable scaled limit of branching processes.
- Even though Dynkin has dealt with quite concrete probability problems, one of his strengths is his ability to build general theories and an apparatus to answer broad questions ...
- In Moscow he has been extremely active in a special high school for gifted students in mathematics.
- From 1989 Dynkin was A R Bullis Professor of Mathematics at Cornell University.
Born 11 May 1924, Leningrad, USSR (now St Petersburg, Russia). Died 14 November 2014, Ithaca, New York, USA.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Group Theory, Origin Russia
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- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
