◀ ▲ ▶History / 20th-century / Person: Faddeev, Dmitrii Konstantinovich

Person: Faddeev, Dmitrii Konstantinovich

Dmitrii Faddeev was a Russian mathematician who worked mainly in algebra, and who made significant contributions to other areas such as number theory, function theory, geometry and probability.

Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):

• It was in St Petersburg that Dmitrii Konstantinovich grew up, for it was there that his parents worked; Konstantin Tikhonovich worked at the famous Nevsky Metalworks, Mechanical and Shipbuilding Factory.
• The city and its inhabitants suffered greatly through the Russian Civil War but when stability returned in 1923, Faddeev began his studies in mathematics at Petrograd State University while, at the same time, studying music at the famous Petrograd Conservatory on Theatre Square.
• Despite his extraordinary talent for the piano, by the time Faddeev reached his third year of study, he realized that he had to choose between mathematics and music.
• At Leningrad State University (as Petrograd State University was renamed in 1924), Faddeev was taught, and was greatly influenced, by Ivan Matveevich Vinogradov and Boris Nikolaevich Delone.
• Here is a curious detail: that period of time was characterized by a practically total deficit, including that of paper; hence, Faddeev had to write his long calculations on the underside of wallpaper.
• Leaving the Weights and Measures Department in 1930, Faddeev taught at various Leningrad schools and also for a time at the Polytechnic Institute and the Engineering Institute.
• At this stage the Institute moved from Leningrad to Moscow but, despite this, Faddeev continued to undertake joint work with others at the Institute.
• In 1940 the Leningrad Department of the Steklov Institute of Mathematics was founded and Faddeev worked there from that time on.
• In 1937 Faddeev became a professor at Leningrad State University, taking on a more important leadership role since Delone had moved to Moscow.
• For the duration of the siege of Leningrad, Faddeev lived in Kazan, about 800 km due east of Moscow and considered safe from the German invasion.
• Faddeev, and other academics, obtained such a permit and again Leningrad State University began to operate.
• Much of Faddeev's early work had been done in collaboration with Delone, particularly the highly significant results he obtained on Diophantine equations.
• Faddeev had a profound influence on the formation and development of numerical methods in mathematics, and the book 'Numerical methods in linear algebra' which he wrote with V N Faddeeva, has been a reference source for several generations of specialists.
• In 1940 Faddeev, in collaboration with Delone, published (in Russian) the book Theory of Irrationalities of Third Degree.
• Also early in his career, while collaborating with Delone, Faddeev studied Galois groups.
• In 1990 Faddeev, in collaboration with V V Ishkhanov and B B Lure, he published the Russian book The embedding problem in Galois theory which was translated into English and the translation published by the American Mathematical Society in 1997.
• Faddeev's work on Galois groups led him to the ideas of homological algebra independently of Samuel Eilenberg and Saunders Mac Lane.
• In joint work with Zenon Ivanovich Borevich (1922-1995), one of Faddeev's students, he began to examine integral representations of rings.
• In the above overview of Faddeev's contributions, there is reference to his highly significant work on computational mathematics.
• As well as these 'Problem' books, Faddeev produced textbooks such as Lectures on algebra.
• Faddeev received many honours including the order of Lenin in 1967 and the order of the Red Banner of Labour which he received on three separate occasions, 1951, 1957, and 1975.

Born 30 June 1907, Yukhnov, Smolensk, now Kaluga, Russia. Died 30 October 1989, Leningrad, USSR (now St Petersburg, Russia).

View full biography at MacTutor

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References

Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:

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