Olga Kharlampovich

Olga Kharlampovich is a Canadian mathematician working in the area of group theory. She is a Professor of Mathematics at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, where she has been working since 1990. She is mostly known for her example of a finitely presented 3-step solvable group with unsolvable word problem (solution of the Novikov–Adian problem) ^[1] and for the solution together with A. Myasnikov of the Tarski conjecture (from 1945) about equivalence of first order theories of finitely generated non-abelian free groups^[2] (also solved by Zlil Sela^[3]) and decidability of this common theory.

She received her Ph.D. from the Leningrad State University (her doctoral advisor was Lev Shevrin) and Russian “Doctor of Science” in 1990 from the Moscow Steklov Institute. Prior to her current appointment at McGill University, she held a position at the Ural State University, Ekaterinburg, Russia. For her undergraduate work on the Novikov–Adian problem she was awarded in 1981 a Medal from the Soviet Academy of Sciences. She gave a negative answer to a question, posed in 1965 by Kargapolov and Mal'cev about the algorithmic decidability of the universal theory of the class of all finite nilpotent groups. Kharlampovich was awarded in 1996 the Krieger–Nelson Prize of the CMS for her work on algorithmic problems in varieties of groups and Lie algebras (the description of this work can be found in the survey paper with Sapir^[4] and on the prize web site). Algebraic geometry for groups that was introduced by Baumslag, Myasnikov, Remeslennikov ^[5] and Kharlampovich ^[6] ,^[7] became one of the new research directions in combinatorial group theory.

As of August 2011 she moved to Hunter College of the City University of New York as the Mary P. Dolciani Professor of Mathematics, where she is the inaugural holder of the first endowed professorship in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics.

References

1. ^ O. Kharlampovich, "A finitely presented solvable group with unsolvable word problem", Izvest. Ak. Nauk, Ser. Mat. (Soviet Math., Izvestia) 45, 4 (1981), 852–873.
2. ^ O. Kharlampovich, and A. Myasnikov. "Elementary theory of free non-abelian groups." Journal of Algebra, vol. 302 (2006), no. 2, pp. 451–552.
3. ^ Z. Sela, "Diophantine geometry over groups. VI. The elementary theory of a free group", Geometric and Functional Analysis 16 (3): 707–730, (2006).
4. ^ O. Kharlampovich and M. Sapir, Algorithmic problems in varieties, a survey, International Journal of Algebra and Computation, (1995), # 12, 379–602.
5. ^ G. Baumslag, A. Miasnikov, V. N. Remeslennikov. Algebraic geometry over groups I. Algebraic sets and ideal theory. J. Algebra. 1999, 219, 16–79.
6. ^ O. Kharlampovich, A. Myasnikov , Irreducible affine varieties over a free group. I: Irreducibility of quadratic equations and nullstellensatz, J. Algebra, V. 200, 492–516 (1998)
7. ^ O. Kharlampovich, A. Myasnikov , Irreducible affine varieties over a free group. II: Systems in row-echelon form and description of residually free groups, J. Algebra, V. 200, 517–570 (1998).

External links

• McGill home page
• Olga Kharlampovich at the Mathematics Genealogy Project.

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Name	Kharlampovich, Olga
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