Khinchin, Aleksandr

Khinchin, Aleksandr Iakovlevich

 

Born July 7 (19), 1894, in the village of Kondrovo, in what is now Kaluga Oblast; died Nov. 18, 1959. Soviet mathematician. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939).

Khinchin graduated from Moscow University in 1916 and became a professor at the university in 1922. His early works dealt with the theory of functions of a real variable. He applied methods of metric function theory to number theory and probability theory. One of the founders of the Soviet school of probability theory, Khinchin obtained important results concerning limit theorems, discovered the law of iterated logarithm, provided a definition of a stationary stochastic process, and laid the foundations of the theory of such processes. He made extensive use of the methods and results of probability theory as a mathematical apparatus for statistical mechanics, and he helped develop mathematical methods of queuing theory.

Khinchin received the State Prize of the USSR in 1941 and was awarded the Order of Lenin, three other orders, and various medals.

REFERENCES

Gnedenko, B. V. “Aleksandr Iakovlevich Khinchin (K shestidesiati-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia).” Uspekhi matematicheskikh nauk, 1955, vol. 10, issue 3.
Gnedenko, B. V. “Aleksandr Iakovlevich Khinchin: Nekrolog.” Teoriia veroiatnostei i eeprimeneniia, 1960, vol. 5, issue 1.