Person: Petrovsky, Ivan Georgievich

Ivan Petrovsky was a Russian mathematician who worked in the field of partial differential equations.

Ivan Georgievich, however, decided to study science at university.
After graduating from the Sevsk high school in 1917, Petrovsky entered Moscow University with the intention of studying biology and chemistry.
Petrovsky worked for a while as a clerk and then entered the technical school for machine construction.
With the ending of the Russian Civil War in November 1920 and stability returning, Petrovsky returned to Moscow University in 1922 but by now his interests were so firmly in mathematics that he did not take up the course he had been intending to follow five years earlier, but read for a degree in mathematics.
Arriving at the given address, Ivan Georgievich learned that the position of stoker was already taken by another student.
Charles de la Vallée-Poussin's text based on his course on mathematical analysis was one of Petrovsky's favourite.
It is remarkable that Petrovsky did not have a catalogue but knew his way round the library very well and was able to find his favourite books quickly.
Petrovsky taught at Moscow University beginning in 1929 and, in 1933, he was appointed as a professor.
Ivan Georgievich worked at home.
Petrovsky's main mathematical work was on the theory of partial differential equations, the topology of algebraic curves and surfaces, and probability.
Petrovsky also worked on the boundary value problem for the heat equation and this was applied to both probability theory and work of Kolmogorov.
One of the main streets in Moscow is named after Petrovsky.

Born 18 January 1901, Sevsk, Orlov guberniya, Russia. Died 15 January 1973, Moscow, USSR.

View full biography at MacTutor

Origin Russia

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

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