Person: Shnirelman, Lev Genrikhovich

Lev Shnirelman was a Belarussian mathematician who made important contributions to the Goldbach conjecture.

These abilities are illustrated by the fact that he studied, in his own home, the complete school course of mathematics between the ages of eleven and twelve.
Shnirelman started research in algebra, geometry and topology as a student but did not consider his results sufficiently important to merit publication.
Shnirelman was appointed to the chair of mathematics at the Don Polytechnic Institute in Novocherkassk in 1929.
L A Lyusternik became a friend and important collaborator with Shnirelman and together they made significant contributions to topological methods in the calculus of variations in a series of paper written jointly between 1927 and 1929.
Shnirelman and Lyusternik also applied their "principle of the stationary point" to other problems of geometry "im Grossen".
In 1930 Shnirelman introduced important new ideas into number theory.
Shnirelman had many more results and ideas than those that were eventually to find their way into the standard texts, and ...
In a talk delivered at a meeting of the German Mathematical Society on the morning of 17 September 1931, Shnirelman first reported on his now famous researches in additive number theory which were to be presented in the 1933 paper given above.
Later significant contributions by Shnirelman include his two papers On the additive properties of numbers, and On addition of sequences published in 1940 after his death.

Born 2 January 1905, Gomel, Belarus. Died 24 September 1938, Moscow, USSR.

View full biography at MacTutor

Origin Belarus, Topology

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