Vladimir Smirnov (mathematician)

Vladimir Ivanovich Smirnov
Born	10 June 1887 Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire
Died	11 February 1974 (aged 86) Leningrad, USSR
Nationality	Russian
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	St. Petersburg State University
Alma mater	St. Petersburg State University
Doctoral advisor	Vladimir Steklov
Doctoral students	Victor Havin Leonid Kantorovich Solomon Mikhlin Artashes Shahinyan Sergei Sobolev

Vladimir Ivanovich Smirnov (Russian: Влади́мир Ива́нович Смирно́в) (10 June 1887 – 11 February 1974) was a Russian mathematician who made significant contributions in both pure and applied mathematics, and also in the history of mathematics.

Smirnov worked on diverse areas of mathematics, such as complex functions and conjugate functions in Euclidean spaces. In the applied field his work includes the propagation of waves in elastic media with plane boundaries (with Sergei Sobolev) and the oscillations of elastic spheres. His pioneering approach to solving the initial-boundary value problem to the wave equation^[1] formed the basis of the spacetime triangle diagram (STTD) technique^[2] for wave motion developed by his follower Victor Borisov (also known as the Smirnov method of incomplete separation of variables^[3][4][5]).

Smirnov was a Ph.D. student of Vladimir Steklov. Among his notable students were Sergei Sobolev, Solomon Mikhlin and Nobel prize winner Leonid Kantorovich.

Smirnov is also widely known among students for his five volume series (in seven books) A Course in Higher Mathematics (Курс высшей математики) (the first volume was written jointly with Jacob Tamarkin).

References

1. V.I. Smirnov, The solution to a problem with limits for the equation of waves in the case of the circle and the sphere. Dokl. Akad. Nauk SSSR [Comptes Rendus de l’Academie des Sciences de l'URSS], 14(1), 13–16 (1937).
2. Hugo E. Hernández-Figueroa, Erasmo Recami, and Michel Zamboni-Rached (eds.) Non-diffracting Waves. Wiley-VCH: Berlin, ISBN 978-3-527-41195-5, pp. 287–306 (2013).
3. V.V. Borisov, Nonsteady-State Electromagnetic Waves. Leningrad: Leningrad State University Press (1987).
4. V.V. Borisov, Electromagnetic Fileds of Transient Currents. Leningrad State University Press (1996).
5. V.V. Borisov and A.B. Utkin, The transient electromagnetic field produced by a moving pulse of line current. Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, 28(4), 614–622 (1995), doi:10.1088/0022-3727/28/4/003

External links

• Vladimir Smirnov at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Vladimir Smirnov", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews.