Israel Gelfand dies at 96; Russian mathematician --...
Rated • 1 review • mathematics • latimes.com
The great mathematician Israel M. Gelfand died last Monday, aged 96. From the Los Angeles Times obituary:
"During a century when mathematicians were becoming ever more specialized, focusing on narrow and often exotic areas of research, Gelfand became a legend as a generalist who made contributions in more than a dozen areas. His work in the field known as representation theory was an underpinning of quantum physics."
"He probably was the last one who worked in almost every area of mathematics, trying to combine things rather than attempting to solve well-known puzzles."
"Russian mathematician Vladimir Arnold had contrasted the approaches of Gelfand and Gelfand's mentor, Andrei Kolmogorov, who were probably the two most famous Russian mathematicians of their era. "Imagine they both arrived in a country with a lot of mountains," he paraphrased Arnold. "Kolmogorov would immediately try to climb the highest mountain. Gelfand would immediately start to build roads.""
The mathematical seminars Gelfand held at Moscow State University are legendary. From the obituary in The New York Times I learned:
"He started a second seminar series, on biology, after leukemia struck one of his sons, Aleksandr. "The best Moscow biologists were happy to come and attend this seminar and give talks and hear very unusual opinion," said Simon Gindikin, a colleague at Rutgers."
