Eugene Dynkin - Biography

Eugene Borisovich Dynkin (Евге́ний Бори́сович Ды́нкин; born May 11, 1924) is a Soviet and American mathematician. He has made contributions to the fields of probability and algebra, especially semisimple Lie groups, Lie algebras, and Markov processes. The Dynkin diagram, the Dynkin system, and Dynkin's lemma are named for him.

Dynkin lived in Leningrad until 1935, when his father was declared "enemy of the people" and the family was exiled to Kazakhstan. At the age of 16, in 1940, despite his father's political difficulties, Dynkin enrolled at Moscow University. He avoided military service in World War II because of his poor eyesight, and received his M.S. in 1945 and his Ph.D. in 1948. He became an assistant professor at Moscow, but was not awarded a "chair" until 1954 because of his political undesirability.

In 1968, Dynkin was forced to transfer from the Moscow University to the Central Economics and Mathematics Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He worked there on the theory of economic growth and economic equilibrium. He remained at the Institute until 1976, when he emigrated to the United States. He became a professor at Cornell University, where he remains .

Prizes and Awards

• Prize of the Moscow Mathematical Society, 1951
• Institute of Mathematical Statistics, Fellow, 1962
• American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Fellow, 1978
• National Academy of Sciences of the USA, Member, 1985
• American Mathematical Society, Leroy P. Steele Prize for Total Mathematical Work, 1993
• Moscow Mathematical Society, Honorary Member, 1995
• Doctor Honoris Causa of the Pierre and Marie Curie University (Paris 6), 1997
• Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Warwick (England), 2003
• Doctor Honoris Causa of the Independent Moscow University (Russia), 2003

See also

Algebra

• Affine Dynkin diagram
• Coxeter–Dynkin diagram
• Dynkin diagram (Dynkin graph)
• Dynkin index

Probability

• Doob–Dynkin lemma
• Dynkin's formula
• Dynkin system

Bibliography

External links

• Department listing at Cornell University
• Personal web page
• Genealogy Tree of Dynkin's School