Person: Sultangazin, Umirzak
Umirzak Sultangazin was a Kazakhstan mathematician who did excellent work on kinetic transport theory. He was an important figure in building up mathematics in Kazakhstan and was involved in the Mir and Soyuz space programmes.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- From 1944 to 1953 Sultangazin studied at the Kara-Oba secondary school.
- This excellent preparation meant that Sultangazin found it an easy task to gain admission to the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the S M Kirov Kazakh State University (today known as the Al-Farabi Kazakh National University) in 1953.
- At the Kazakh State University, Sultangazin was taught by some outstanding professors.
- Sultangazin said that the fine teaching he had from Myrzagali Karsakbaev made the transition from elementary "concrete" school mathematics to "abstract" university mathematics easy for him.
- He was Sultangazin's thesis advisor and praised highly his thesis 'The relative movement of the point of variable mass'.
- Zhanat Sultangazina is the director of the tea and coffee processing company "Chainy Dvor, Too".
- Almas Sultangazin, born in July 1964, is a co-founder of the Sulpak retail chain and one of the most influential businessmen in Kazakhstan.
- After graduating in 1958, Sultangazin was appointed as an assistant working for next six years in the departments of higher algebra, differential equations and computational mathematics of Kazakh State University.
- Marchuk had been appointed as deputy director of the Institute of Mathematics of the Siberian Branch in Novosibirsk and, after Sultangazin arrived there, he quickly realised his potential.
- Marchuk became Sultangazin's doctoral thesis advisor.
- We note that the Russian doctorate was of a similar standard to the habilitation or the D.Sc. In 1966, Sultangazin defended his doctoral thesis on the topic "The splitting method for the kinetic transport equation".
- Sultangazin returned to Kazakh State University and continued to publish papers on kinetic transport theory, the next two being On solving the kinetic transfer equation by the splitting method (Russian) (1966) and Solution of the transfer equation in the case of an anisotropic scattering by the splitting method (Russian) (1966).
- In 1978 Sultangazin became director of the Institute of Mathematics and Mechanics of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR.
- In 1985 Sultangazin became a member of the executive committee of the National Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR and, in the following year, he became its vice-president.
- In 1991, at Sultangazin's initiative, the Space Research Institute of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan was founded.
- Sultangazin approached President of the Republic of Kazakhstan and discussed with him a State Programme for the Development of the Space Industry in Kazakhstan.
- With much input from Sultangazin, the Programme was approved in January 2005.
- To understand Sultangazin's research in more detail, we look at books which he has written.
- In 1985 Sultangazin published Discrete nonlinear models of the Boltzmann equation (Russian).
- The only book by Sultangazin which has been translated into English is Discrete nonlinear models of the Boltzmann equation (1987).
- Another multi-author book involving Sultangazin is Concentrated capacity in problems of thermo-physics and micro-electronics (Russian) published in 1992.
- Sultangazin received many honours for his outstanding contributions.
- After becoming seriously ill, Sultangazin went to Berlin for treatment where he died in a medical clinic in 2005.
- Also in 2011 Kazakhstan issued a stamp to commemorate Sultangazin's 75th birthday.
- In 2018, the Kostanay State Pedagogical University was named for Sultangazin and in 2019 a monument to Sultangazin was unveiled in Kostanay near the Pedagogical University.
- Umirzak Makhmutovich is one of the world-renowned academicians of Kazakhstan.
Born 4 October 1936, Karaoba, Sarykol district, Kostanay region, Kazakh SSR, USSR (now Kazakhstan). Died 23 May 2005, Berlin, Germany.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Origin Kazakhstan
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
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- non-Github:
- @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
