Pavel Aleksandrov

Born Apr. 25 (May 7), 1896, in Bogorodsk, now Noginsk, Moscow Oblast. Soviet mathematician; academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR since 1953 and a corresponding member since 1929. Awarded Hero of Socialist Labor in 1969.

Aleksandrov was graduated from Moscow University in 1917 and has been a professor there since 1929. He became the honorary president of the Moscow Mathematical Society in 1964, having been its president from 1932 to 1964. A member of many foreign academies and scientific societies, Aleksandrov is the creator of the Soviet school of topology, which has achieved universal recognition. His students include Academicians of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR L. S. Pontriagin and A. N. Tikhonov and Academician of the Georgian SSR G. S. Chogoshvili. Initially involved in the study of set theory and theory of functions, Aleksandrov later devoted himself to topology. With P. S. Uryson he founded and developed the theory of compact and bicompact spaces. He introduced a number of basic concepts and constructs in topology, among them the theorem that an arbitrarily general topological space may be approximated to an arbitrary degree of accuracy by simple geometric figures, namely polyhedrons. He created the theory of essential mappings and the homological theory of dimensionality, which led to a number of basic laws of duality relating the topological properties of figures and sets to the topological properties of an additional part of space. Aleksandrov was awarded the State Prize of the USSR in 1943 and is the recipient of five Orders of Lenin and other orders and medals.