Israel Gelfand

Infobox_Scientist
name = Israïl Moiseevich Gelfand


birth_date = birth date and age|1913|9|2
birth_place = Krasnye Okny, Odessa, Ukraine,
Imperial Russia
nationality = RUSn
death_date =
death_place =
field = Mathematician
work_institution = Moscow State University,
Rutgers University
alma_mater = Moscow State University
doctoral_advisor = Andrei Kolmogorov
doctoral_students = Endre Szemerédi
known_for = Group Theory, Representation Theory, mathematical analysis
prizes = Order of Lenin (three times)
Wolf Prize (1978)
AMS Steele Prize (2005)


footnotes =

Israïl Moiseevich Gelfand ( _ru. Израиль Моисеевич Гельфанд, _yi. ישראל געלפֿאַנד) (born on OldStyleDate|2 September|1913|20 August) is a mathematician who has contributed substantially in different branches including Group Theory, Representation Theory, Linear Algebra etc. Gelfand has taught for many years at Moscow State University, USSR and now is in Rutgers University, USA. He is recipient of awards and honors including the Order of Lenin and the Wolf Prize. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Biography

He was born into a Jewish family in Okny, Kherson gubernia of the Russian Empire (now Krasnye Okny in Ukraine).

He did not attend high-school or college but went straight to graduate school.

He did postgraduate work at the Moscow State University where his advisor was Andrei Kolmogorov.

He is considered by many to be the leading figure of the Soviet school of mathematics, and has exerted a tremendous influence on the field both through his own works and those of his students. He ran a famous seminar at Moscow State University. In 1990 he emigrated to the U.S. and took up a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at the math department at Rutgers University in New Jersey, where he is now an associate member of the faculty.

The mathematician Sergei Gelfand is his son. Among his students are the mathematicians Endre Szemerédi and Alexandre Kirillov.

Work

He is known for many developments including:

* the Gelfand representation in Banach algebra theory;
* the Gelfand–Naimark theorem;
* the Gelfand-Naimark-Segal construction;
* the representation theory of the complex classical Lie groups;
* contributions to the theory of Verma modules in the representation theory of semisimple Lie algebras (with I.N. Bernstein and S.I. Gelfand);
* contributions to distribution theory and measures on infinite-dimensional spaces [cite book|title=Generalized Functions|first=I.M.|last=Gel'fand|coauthors=n.Ya.Vilenkin|isbn=0-12-279504-0|publisher=Academic Press|pages=375pp|date=1964] ;
* the first observation of the connection of automorphic forms with representations (with Sergei Fomin);
* conjectures about the index theorem;
* Ordinary differential equations (Gelfand-Levitan theory);
* work on calculus of variations and soliton theory (Gelfand-Dikii equations);
* contributions to the "philosophy of cusp forms";
* Gelfand-Fuks cohomology of foliations;
* Gelfand-Kirillov dimension;
* integral geometry;
* combinatorial definition of the Pontryagin class;
* Coxeter functors;
* generalised hypergeometric series;

and many other results, particularly in the representation theory for the classical groups.

Influence outside of mathematics

The "Gelfand-Tsetlin basis" (also in the common spelling "Zetlin") is a widely-used tool in theoretical physics and the result of Gelfand's work on the representation theory of the unitary group and Lie groups in general.

For a long time he took an interest in cell biology.

He has worked extensively in mathematics education, particularly with correspondence education. In 1994, he was awarded a MacArthur fellowship for this work.

Honors and Awards

Gelfand was awarded the Order of Lenin three times for his research. In 1977 he was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society. He won the Wolf Prize in 1978,Kyoto Prize in 1989 and MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1994. He held the presidency of the Moscow Mathematical Society between 1968 and 1970, and has been elected a foreign member of the U.S. National Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Irish Academy, the American Mathematical Society and the London Mathematical Society. He holds several honorary degrees.

ee also

*Gelfand pair

Notes

External links

*MathGenealogy |id=17512
*MacTutor Biography|id=Gelfand
* [http://www.math.rutgers.edu/people/faculty.html Faculty appointments at Rutgers Math, Including Gelfand] .
* [http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~sontag/gelfand-publics.pdf List of publications] .
* [http://www.ams.org/notices/200504/comm-steele.pdf Steele Prize citation] .