Boris Nikolayevich Delaunay or Delone (russian: Бори́с Никола́евич Делоне́; 15 March 1890 – 17 July 1980) was a Soviet and Russian
mathematician, mountain climber, and the father of
physicist,
Nikolai Borisovich Delone
Nikolai Delaunay, Jr. (aka Delone, Nikolai Borisovich; 22 May 1926 – 11 September 2008) was a Soviet physicist born in Leningrad, USSR (now Saint Petersburg, Russia).
Life
Delone was born in Leningrad on 22 May 1926. He was the son of Boris D ...
.
The spelling ''Delone'' is a straightforward
transliteration from
Cyrillic
, bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця
, fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs
, fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic
, fam3 = Phoenician
, fam4 = G ...
he often used in later publications, while ''Delaunay'' is the
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
version he used in the early French and
German publications.
Biography
Boris Delone got his
surname
In some cultures, a surname, family name, or last name is the portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family, tribe or community.
Practices vary by culture. The family name may be placed at either the start of a person's full name ...
from his ancestor
French Army officer de Launay, who was captured in Russia during
Napoleon's invasion of 1812. De Launay was a nephew of the
Bastille governor
marquis de Launay. He married a woman from the
Tukhachevsky
Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky ( rus, Михаил Николаевич Тухачевский, Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevskiy, p=tʊxɐˈtɕefskʲɪj; – 12 June 1937) nicknamed the Red Napoleon by foreign newspapers, was a Sovie ...
noble family and stayed in Russia.
When Boris was a young boy his family spent summers in the
Alps where he learned
mountain climbing
Mountaineering or alpinism, is a set of outdoor activities that involves ascending tall mountains. Mountaineering-related activities include traditional outdoor climbing, skiing, and traversing via ferratas. Indoor climbing, sport climbing, a ...
. By 1913, he became one of the top three Russian mountain climbers. After the
Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution was a period of Political revolution (Trotskyism), political and social revolution that took place in the former Russian Empire which began during the First World War. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and ad ...
, he climbed mountains in the
Caucasus and
Altai
Altai or Altay may refer to:
Places
*Altai Mountains, in Central and East Asia, a region shared by China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Russia
In China
* Altay Prefecture (阿勒泰地区), Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China
* Altay City (阿 ...
. One of the mountains (4300 m) near
Belukha is named after him. In the 1930s, he was among the first to receive a qualification of Master of mountain climbing of the USSR. Future
Nobel laureate
The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make out ...
in physics
Igor Tamm was his associate in setting tourist camps in the mountains.
Boris Delaunay worked in the fields of
modern algebra, the
geometry of numbers. He used the results of
Evgraf Fedorov,
Hermann Minkowski
Hermann Minkowski (; ; 22 June 1864 – 12 January 1909) was a German mathematician and professor at Königsberg, Zürich and Göttingen. He created and developed the geometry of numbers and used geometrical methods to solve problems in number t ...
,
Georgy Voronoy
Georgy Feodosevich Voronoy (russian: Георгий Феодосьевич Вороной; ukr, Георгій Феодосійович Вороний; 28 April 1868 – 20 November 1908) was an Imperial Russian mathematician of Ukrainian descent ...
, and others in his development of modern
mathematical crystallography
Crystallography is the experimental science of determining the arrangement of atoms in crystalline solids. Crystallography is a fundamental subject in the fields of materials science and solid-state physics (condensed matter physics). The word ...
and general mathematical model of crystals. He invented what is now called
Delaunay triangulation in 1934;
Delone sets are also named after him. Among his best students are the mathematicians
Aleksandr Aleksandrov and
Igor Shafarevich
Igor Rostislavovich Shafarevich (russian: И́горь Ростисла́вович Шафаре́вич; 3 June 1923 – 19 February 2017) was a Soviet and Russian mathematician who contributed to algebraic number theory and algebraic geometry. ...
.
Delaunay was elected the corresponding member of the
Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union in 1929.
[Boris Nikolaevich Deaunay (in Russian)](_blank)
Division of Higher Geometry and Topology, Mathematics and Mechanics Department, Moscow State University. Delaunay is credited as being an organizer, in Leningrad in 1934, of the first
mathematical olympiad for high school students in the Soviet Union.
[S. S. Ryshkov, D. K. Faddeev and M. I. Shtogri]
Boris Nikolaevich Delone (on the occasion of his eightieth birthday).
Russian Mathematical Surveys, vol. 26 (1971), pp. 199–203; p. 200
Books
* Delone, B. N.; Raikov, D. A. (1948, 1949). ''Analytic Geometry'' (2 vols.). State Technical Press. (in Russian)
*
Kolmogorov, Andrey Nikolaevich et al. (1969). ''Mathematics: Its Content, Methods and Meaning'', chapter ''Analytic Geometry'', by B. N. Delone. MIT Press. (translated from the Russian)
References
External links
Biography (in Russian)on the website of the
Moscow State University
*
*
Boris Nikolaevich Delone (On his seventieth birthday)80th Birthday - Reproduction of an article in Russian Mathematical Surveys 26 (1971) 199-203, with the kind permission of the London Mathematical SocietyPage
Also i
PDF format
* Nikolay P. Dolbilin
''The Delone Peak'', 2010.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Delaunay, Boris
1890 births
1980 deaths
20th-century Russian mathematicians
Mathematicians from Saint Petersburg
People from Sankt-Peterburgsky Uyezd
Corresponding Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences
Members of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology faculty
Moscow State University alumni
Saint Petersburg State University faculty
Recipients of the Order of Lenin
Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour
Geometers
Russian people of French descent
Sportspeople from Saint Petersburg
Russian mountain climbers
Soviet mathematicians
Soviet mountain climbers