| 1 | Name: | Professor Vladimir I. Arnold | |
| Institution: | Steklov Institute of Mathematics & Academy of Sciences, Russia & CEREMADE, University of Paris, Dauphine, France | ||
| Year Elected: | 1990 | ||
| Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | ||
| Residency: | International | ||
| Living? : | Deceased | ||
| Birth Date: | 1937 | ||
| Death Date: | June 3, 2010 | ||
Vladimir Arnold was born in 1937 in Odessa (then U.S.S.R, presently Ukraine). One of the most distinguished mathematicians in the world, he was educated at Moscow State University and became famous at age 19 for his brilliant solution to Hilbert's 13th problem. In this solution, Dr. Arnold was able to prove that each continuous function of three variables is representable as a super position of continuous functions of two variables -- the exact opposite of what people expected. Dr. Arnold is also one of the founders of KAM theory. In this theory, if one perturbs a completely integratable Hamiltonian system the resulting system still possesses infinitely many invariant tori. The theory has many applications in celestial mechanics and plasma physics, among other fields. In his examination of infinite dimensional Hamiltonian systems, Dr. Arnold studied the Euler equations of ideal gas flow as equations of geodesics on an infinite dimensional lie group of smooth volume preserving transformation. He has conducted path-breaking work on singularity theory and its use in caustics and wave fronts, discovering connections with regular polyhedra and crystallographic symmetry groups - fundamental work connecting real algebraic topology and modern topology and in symplectic and variational problems. The author of a number of outstanding textbooks, Dr. Arnold held professorial positions at Moscow State University for twenty-five years. At present he teaches at Steklove Mathematical Institute in Moscow and the Universite Paris 9. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the French Academy of Science and the Royal Society of London, among others. He is the recipient of many awards, including the 1982 Crafoord Prize of the Swedish Academy, the 2001 Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics, the 2001 Wolf Prize in Mathematics, the 2007 State Prize of the Russian Federation and the 2008 Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences. | |||