Wednesday, October 7, 2009

I.M. Gelfand, 1913-2009




The noncommutative geometry blog is deeply saddened to inform its readers of the passing of Israil Moiseevic Gelfand, one of the most influential mathematicians of the 20th century, on October 5 at the age of 96. Gelfand's monumental contributions to mathematics and science covered many areas including commutative normed rings and functional analysis, representation theory of Lie groups and Lie algebras, generalized functions, mathematical physics, partial differential equations, and theoretical biology. His celebrated structure theorems for commutative and noncommutative C*-algebras are among the pillars of operator algebras and NCG. We hope to cover Gelfand' s work and impact more extensively but meanwhile you can check the AMS web site for more on Gelfand's work.
And here is a NYT obituary, and an Interview from six years ago.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Israel Moiseevich Gelfand was a Soviet and Russian mathematician who made major contributions to many branches of mathematics, including group theory, representation theory and linear algebra. The recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Order of Lenin and the Wolf Prize, he was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a lifelong academic, serving decades as a professor at Moscow State University and, after immigrating to the United States shortly before his 76th birthday, at the Busch Campus of New Jersey's Rutgers University. I am a college sophomore with a dual major in Physics and Mathematics @ University of California, Santa Barbara. By the way, i came across these excellent physics flash cards. Its also a great initiative by the FunnelBrain team. Amazing!!!

Anonymous said...

The recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Order of Lenin and the Wolf Prize, he was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a lifelong academic, serving decades as a professor at Moscow State University and, after immigrating to the United States shortly before his 76th birthday, at the Busch Campus of New Jersey's Rutgers University. I've been studying for my nursing exam and this was a great break to read this post. Thank you!