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Person: Zhautykov, Orymbek

Orymbek Zhautykov was a Kazakh mathematician who published over 200 works consisting of research papers, popular science works, pedagogical works, works on the history of mathematics, undergraduate textbooks and other articles.

Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):

• Orymbek Akhmetbekovich was fascinated by the Russian language and was very diligent in carrying out all the tasks his teacher gave him.
• There Orymbek Akhmetbekovich learnt the rules of arithmetic and soon became highly proficient.
• He was taught mathematics by Sergei Mikhailovich Ponomarev, a graduate of the Leningrad Pedagogical University, and Zhautykov graduated in 1930.
• Zhautykov studied at the Kazakh Pedagogical University during the years when the first five-year plan was taking effect.
• Zhautykov spent time there, but was also sent by Komsomol, the Communist Soviet youth organisation, to the collective farms of the Zhana-Arka region.
• After graduating with a first degree in mathematics in 1934, Zhautykov was offered work as an assistant in the Department of Mathematics of the Kazakh Pedagogical University while he undertook research for a higher degree.
• At this time the University had an arrangement with Leningrad State University so that Zhautykov could register as an external student in the Leningrad Research Institute of Mathematics and Mechanics.
• As the German armies rapidly advanced towards Leningrad, many people were evacuated from the city and Zhautykov was forced to end his research there and returned to the Kazakh Pedagogical University in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
• Back in Almaty, Zhautykov began to work with Konstantin Petrovich Persidsky (1903-1970) who had come from Kazan to take up a position at the Kazakh Pedagogical University.
• Persidsky had been working on Aleksandr Mikhailovich Lyapunov's ideas on the theory of stability and organised a scientific seminar on the theory of stability in which Zhautykov took part.
• This led to Zhautykov submitting the thesis Some questions of the theory of stability of motion in the sense of Lyapunov for the degree of Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences and he was awarded the degree in 1944.
• At the beginning of 1945 Zhautykov was a member of a delegation of Kazakh scientists headed by Kanysh Imantayuli Satbayev (1899-1964), which went to Moscow to seek approval for the structure and staffing of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR which they had based on the existing branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
• Zhautykov spent time during this visit both in Moscow and in Leningrad where he met with Ivan Matveevich Vinogradov, Vladimir Ivanovich Smirnov, Ivan Georgievich Petrovsky and other scientists to discuss the problems and topics that the Department of Mathematics and Mechanics, proposed as part of the new Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR, would work on after its opening.
• The proposals that Zhautykov presented to these mathematicians were enthusiastically supported.
• Zhautykov was a senior researcher in the Academy from its founding and, in 1951, he became head of its Department of Mathematics and Mechanics.
• Zhautykov's publications began in 1947 with Some theorems on the stability of motion followed by a book in 1949 written jointly with Persidsky.
• Also in 1949 Zhautykov published the paper Cauchy's problem for a denumerable system of partial differential equations (Russian).
• We note, however, that Joaquín Basilio Díaz pointed out in a review that there are some errors in these early papers by Zhautykov.
• Zhautykov was interested in supporting the teaching of mathematics in Kazakhstan and one of the ways that he approached this was publishing books in Kazakh.
• In 1961 Zhautykov was awarded a doctorate (equivalent in standard to the habilitation) for his thesis Study of infinite systems of differential equations (Russian).
• Let us look at two further books by Zhautykov.
• In 1978 Zhautykov published Mathematics, and progress in science and technology (Russian).
• At the same time O A Zhautykov was known as a specialist in the history and methodology of mathematics and a consistent populariser of mathematical knowledge.
• Zhautykov was Deputy Director of the Institute of Mathematics and Mechanics of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR (1965-68), Head of the Laboratory of Ordinary Differential Equations of the Institute of Mathematics and Mechanics of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR (1965-87), and Academic Secretary of the Department of Physics and Mathematics of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR (1969-85).
• We noted above that Zhautykov wrote works on the history of mathematics.
• The First International Zhautykov Olympiad in Mathematics was held in January 2005.
• The Republican Physics-Mathematics Secondary Boarding School in Almaty is named after Orymbek Akhmetbekovich Zhautykov.

Born 1 May 1911, Village No 2, Kounrad district, Karaganda region, Russian Empire (now Kazakhstan). Died 15 May 1989, Almaty, Kazakh SSR, USSR (now Kazakhstan).

View full biography at MacTutor

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Origin Kazakhstan

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

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@J-J-O'Connor

@E-F-Robertson

References

Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:

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