Lazar Aronovich Lyusternik (1899, Zduńska Wola, Kalisz Governorate — 1981, Moscow) was a Soviet mathematician specializing in the calculus of variations, functional analysis, topology, and computational mathematics; corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1946). In the late 1920s and early 1930s he worked as a professor in Nizhny Novgorod.[1]
Origins and Education
He was born on December 19 (31), 1899, in the town of Zduńska Wola (Polish: Zduńska Wola) in Kalisz Governorate of the Russian Empire, now in the Łódź Voivodeship of Poland. His father was the director and co-owner of a small factory; in questionnaires Lyusternik gave his background as of the "merchant" estate. From his youth he spoke Polish and German. He graduated from a gymnasium in Łódź, then from the Smolensk gymnasium (1918), after which he entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at Moscow University, graduating in 1924. As a student he was a pupil of N. N. Luzin and a member of his research circle, "Luzitania." Alongside his studies he taught mathematics at the workers' faculty (rabfak) of the Institute of Transport. In 1924–1926 he did graduate work at Moscow State University and defended his dissertation "On the Direct Method in the Calculus of Variations," receiving the degree of Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences.[1]
Scientific Work
His main works of the 1920s–1930s were devoted to the calculus of variations, function theory, functional analysis, and topological methods. Together with L. G. Schnirelmann, Lyusternik applied topological methods to H. Poincaré's famous conjecture on three geodesics (1929–1930), proving that every regular closed surface homeomorphic to a sphere has at least three closed geodesics. In 1928 he took part in the International Congress of Mathematicians in Bologna; he gave talks at the congress of German mathematicians in Danzig and at the Moscow Mathematical Society, and published in foreign scientific journals.[1]
In 1932–1935 he worked part-time as a senior engineer at the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI), where he was among the first to justify the applicability of the finite-difference method (the grid method) to solving a number of equations of mathematical physics, which found practical use in aerohydrodynamics problems. From 1934 he was a staff member of the V. A. Steklov Institute of Mathematics of the USSR Academy of Sciences (MIAN): until 1942 as a senior researcher, from 1942 as head of the Department of Approximate Calculations, and from 1945 as deputy director.[1]
From 1931 until the end of his life he was a professor at Moscow State University; in 1936–1943 he headed the Department of Functional Analysis. He taught courses on probability theory, finite differences, difference equations, interpolation formulas, and mathematical methods of aerodynamics.[1]
Nizhny Novgorod Period
In 1928 Lyusternik left Moscow and moved to Nizhny Novgorod, where he was confirmed as professor in the Department of Mathematics at Nizhny Novgorod University. After a separate Nizhny Novgorod Pedagogical Institute was established in 1930 on the basis of the university's pedagogical faculty, he continued teaching there as well. At the end of 1930 he returned to Moscow.[1]
Sources
- books.e-heritage.ru — Scientific Heritage of Russia Electronic Library