D. K. Faddeev and St. Petersburg algebraic school (Q946036)

The 100th anniversary of birthday of an outstanding mathematician, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Faddeev(1907--1989) was celebrated on June 30, 2007. He is the founder of the Leningrad-St. Petersburg algebraic school,which has gained world-wide recognition. At the age of sixteen, he entered the mathematical department of Petrograd University and since that time to the end of his life his multifarious creative activity was closely related to this University (now St. Petersbg. Univ.), of which he became a Professor in 1933. In 1932, he started working at the Steklov mathematical institute of the Academy of Sciences, and for many years headed the laboratory of algebraic methods, which became a generally recognized center of algebraic studies. A review of scientific achievements of D. K. Faddeev is given: in the theory of Diophantine equations, in the so-called inverse problem of Galois theory (together with B. N. Delone, I. R. Shafarevich, A. V. Yakovlev, V. V. Ishkhanov, and B. B. Lur'e), in the theory of homologies in groups (the first systematic presentation of the theory of cohomologies of groups, with Z. I. Borevich; further elaborated in the famous Merkur'ev-Suslin theorem), in the theory of integral representations, in numerical methods of linear algebra. He wrote the books which are deservedly considered the best university books on algebra. Faddeev's scientific interests were not confined to algebra alone. He also has brilliant works in the theory of functions, probability theory, and so on. Some of his results became classical.