Pyotr Novikov

Pyotr Sergeyevich Novikov (Russian Пётр Сергеевич Новиков; born August 15, 1901 in Moscow, † January 9, 1975 ) was a Russian mathematician who worked on mathematical logic, set theory, mathematical physics and group theory.

Life and work

Pyotr Sergeyevich Novikov was the son of a Moscow merchant and studied from 1919 at the Lomonosov University in Moscow, interrupted by service in the Red Army in the civil war from 1920 to 1922. In 1925 he graduated and did research under Nikolai Nikolaevich Luzin. He taught at the Institute of Chemical Technology in Moscow and in 1934 was a member of the Steklov Institute. In 1935, he received his PhD ( candidate), and in 1939 professor. In 1973, he went into retirement. 1944 to 1972 he was Head of Analysis at the State Teachers' Seminary in Moscow.

In 1953 he became a corresponding and 1960 a full member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

He was since 1935 the mathematician Lyudmila Vsevolodovna Keldysh, who was also a student of Luzin and professor at the Steklov Institute, married and had with her five children, one of them the Fields Medal winners Sergei Petrovich Novikov and the astronomer Leonid Novikov.

Novikov proved 1943, the consistency of arithmetic with recursive definitions. In 1952 he demonstrated the unsolvability of the word problem for groups ( to find an effective procedure, whether in a group with a finite number of generators and relations a "word " (product of group elements ) corresponds to the identity ). For this he received the Lenin Prize in 1957. He also made ​​important contributions to the solution of the Burnside problem in group theory ( each periodic group is finitely generated finite? ) In the special case of equal finite exponential for each group member. His first proof from 1959, which showed the existence of infinite such groups depending on the number of generators and the order of the periodicity of the elements ( ie for all group elements ), was not entirely correct, with Sergei Adian he was, however, in 1968 a proof of existence for, in her book The Burnside problem and identities in groups improved from 1979 on. He also showed the finiteness.

It should not be confused with the Russian General Pyotr Georgjewitsch Novikov ( 1906-1944 ).

Works

• Elements of mathematical logic ( 1959)