Pavel Sergeyevich Alexandrov
Pavel Sergeyevich Alexandrov
Born	November 16, 1896
Died	May 7, 1982 (age 85)
Nationality	Russian
Fields	Mathematics
Alma mater	Moscow State University
Doctoral students	Aleksandr Kurosh Lev Pontryagin Andrey Tychonoff

Pavel Sergeyevich Alexandrov (Russian: Па́вел Серге́евич Алекса́ндров), sometimes romanized Aleksandroff or Aleksandrov (November 16, 1896–May 7, 1982) was a Soviet Russian mathematician. He wrote about three hundred papers, making important contributions to set theory and topology.

In topology, the Alexandroff compactification and the Alexandrov topology are named after him.

Alexandrov attended Moscow State University where he was a student of Dmitri Egorov and Nikolai Luzin. Together with Pavel Urysohn, he visited the University of Göttingen in 1923 and 1924. After getting his Ph.D. in 1927, he continued to work at Moscow State University and also joined the Steklov Mathematical Institute. He made lifelong friends with Andrey Kolmogorov, about whom he said: "in 1979 this friendship [with Kolmogorov] celebrated its fiftieth anniversary and over the whole of this half century there was not only never any breach in it, there was also never any quarrel, in all this time there was never any misunderstanding between us on any question, no matter how important for our lives and our philosophy; even when our opinions on one of these questions differed, we showed complete understanding and sympathy for the views of each other."

Alexandrov was an active participant in the political offensive against Luzin which is known as the Luzin affair (1936).

He had a number of students, including Aleksandr Kurosh, Lev Pontryagin and Andrey Tychonoff. He was made a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1953.

Pavel Alexandrov should not be confused with Aleksandr Danilovich Aleksandrov, another mathematician at the Steklov Institute.

[edit] External links

• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Pavel Alexandrov", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Aleksandrov.html .
• Pavel Alexandrov at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• In November 2008 The Pavel Sergeevich Alexandrov Theatre (for acoustic arts) was opened in honour of Alexandrov's lifetime achievement. Although the theatre has no direct connection to Alexandrov, and has no intention of producing pieces based on his work, his name was chosen due to a high demand amongst the anonymous donors for the man to be remembered in this fashion. The theatre has put on one production so far, a small circus piece held in the theatre's main exhibition space.^{[citation needed]}
• The 1936 Luzin affair – from the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive
• Lorentz G.G., Mathematics and Politics in the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1953
• Kutateladze S.S., The Tragedy of Mathematics in Russia