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Mihail KravchukUkrainian mathematician
Date of Birth: 12.10.1892
Country:  Ukraine |
Content:
Biography of Mikhail Kravchuk
Mikhail Kravchuk was a Ukrainian mathematician who made significant contributions to various fields of mathematics, including algebra, number theory, function theory, permutation matrices, algebraic, transcendental, differential, and integral equations, polynomials related to binomial distribution, mathematical statistics, probability theory, and more. He was born in 1892 in the city of Volodymyr-Volynskyi, which was then part of the Russian Empire.
Education and Career
Kravchuk completed his secondary education at a gymnasium in Lutsk in 1910. He then went on to study at the mathematics department of the Saint Volodymyr University in Kiev from 1910 to 1914. During his time there, he became a student of D.A. Grave. In 1914-1915, he participated in seminars conducted by N.N. Luzin, D.F. Egorov, and other prominent mathematicians in Moscow.
After completing his education, Kravchuk taught mathematics at various educational institutions in Kiev from 1917 to 1920. In 1921, he joined the faculty of the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, where he taught until 1938. He defended his doctoral dissertation on "Quadratic Forms and Linear Transformations" in 1924, which further solidified his reputation as a distinguished mathematician.
Persecution and Legacy
Tragically, on February 21, 1938, Kravchuk was arrested and stripped of his membership in the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. On September 23, 1938, he was sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment and 5 years of exile. He passed away on March 9, 1942, in the notorious Kolyma labor camps.
Despite the hardships he faced, Kravchuk's contributions to mathematics have not been forgotten. He authored approximately 180 scientific papers and was known for his work on the Kravchuk polynomials, which are related to classical orthogonal polynomials of a discrete variable and generalize the Hermite polynomials. These polynomials are widely used in modern mathematics.
In recognition of his achievements, Kravchuk was posthumously rehabilitated on September 15, 1956, and restored as a full member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences on March 20, 1992. To honor his memory, the National Technical University of Ukraine "Kyiv Polytechnic Institute" organizes annual conferences named after him. In 2003, a monument to Mikhail Kravchuk was erected near the main campus of the university, and a memorial plaque was installed on the house where he once lived.
