Veniamin Kagan

Veniamin Fedorovich Kagan (Russian Вениамин Фёдорович Каган; born March 9, 1869 in Šiauliai, then Kovno Governorate, Russian Empire; † May 8, 1953 in Moscow) was a Russian mathematician.

Kagan was born into a poor Jewish family. 1871 the family moved to Dnipropetrovsk ( Jekaterinoslaw ), where he grew up. Kagan studied from 1887 at the University of Odessa, but was referred 1889 as a politically active student of the University. In 1892 he made ​​for self- studies as an external student at the University of Kiev its conclusion. He continued his studies at the University of Saint Petersburg in Andrei Markov and Konstantin Posse, was there in 1895 a PhD ( candidate) and 1907 habilitation ( in Russia called "doctor" ). From 1897 he was a lecturer and in 1904 professor in Odessa and in 1923 professor of geometry at the Lomonosov University in Moscow. In 1952, he went into retirement.

Kagan was in Russia founder of a school of differential geometry and led in Russia the tensor in differential geometry a. He also dealt with axiomatization of Euclidean geometry and the history of geometry, in which he, inter alia, one from 1946 to 1951, a five-volume annotated edition of the works of Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky published. In 1903, he simplified Max Dehn's solution of the third Hilbert problem considerably.

In 1943 he was awarded the Soviet State Prize. He founded Odessa in the scientific publishing Mathesis and was Head of Mathematics and Natural Science of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.

His doctoral include Pyotr Raschewski, Alexander Petrovich north, Viktor Vladimirovich Wagner and Isaac Jaglom. Even the physicist Igor Tamm was one of 1921/2 to his students. Kagan is the maternal grandfather of the mathematician Yakov Sinai, and by Grigori Isaakowitsch Barenblatt.

Writings

  • Foundations of Geometry, 2 volumes, Odessa 1905, 1907 (Russian)
  • N.Lobatschewski, Moscow, Leningrad, 1948 ( Russian, French translation Moscow 1974)
  • About the transformation of the polyhedra, Mathematische Annalen Bd.57, 1903, S.421 ( 3rd Hilbert problem)
Andrey Markov Isaak Yaglom Siegfried Gottwald Christoph Scriba Name Authority File
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