David Volfovich Chudnovsky (born January 22, 1947 in
Kyiv
Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the seventh-most populous city in Europe.
Ky ...
) and Gregory Volfovich Chudnovsky (born April 17, 1952 in Kyiv) are Ukrainian-born American
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
s and engineers known for their world-record mathematical calculations and developing the
Chudnovsky algorithm
The Chudnovsky algorithm is a fast method for calculating the digits of , based on Ramanujan’s formulae. It was published by the Chudnovsky brothers in 1988.
It was used in the world record calculations of 2.7 trillion digits of in Decembe ...
used to calculate the digits of
with extreme precision.
Careers in mathematics
As a child, Gregory Chudnovsky was given a copy of ''
What Is Mathematics?'' by his father (Volf Grigorovich Chudnovski, a Soviet-Ukrainian professor of technical sciences) and decided that he wanted to be a mathematician. As a high schooler, he solved
Hilbert's tenth problem
Hilbert's tenth problem is the tenth on the list of mathematical problems that the German mathematician David Hilbert posed in 1900. It is the challenge to provide a general algorithm which, for any given Diophantine equation (a polynomial equ ...
, shortly after
Yuri Matiyasevich had solved it. He received a mathematics degree from
Kyiv State University in 1974 and a
PhD PHD or PhD may refer to:
* Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification
Entertainment
* '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series
* '' Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic
* Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group
** Ph.D. (Ph.D. al ...
the following year from the
Institute of Mathematics
This is a list of Institutes of Mathematics or Mathematical Institutes.
Americas
* American Institute of Mathematics
* Clay Mathematics Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts
* Centre de Recherches Mathématiques, at the Université de Montréal
* ...
,
National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
The National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU; uk, Національна академія наук України, ''Natsional’na akademiya nauk Ukrayiny'', abbr: NAN Ukraine) is a self-governing state-funded organization in Ukraine th ...
.
In part to avoid
religious persecution
Religious persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or a group of individuals as a response to their religious beliefs or affiliations or their lack thereof. The tendency of societies or groups within societies to alienate o ...
and in part to seek better medical care for Gregory, who had been diagnosed with
myasthenia gravis
Myasthenia gravis (MG) is a long-term neuromuscular junction disease that leads to varying degrees of skeletal muscle weakness. The most commonly affected muscles are those of the eyes, face, and swallowing. It can result in double vision, ...
, a
neuromuscular disease
A neuromuscular disease is any disease affecting the peripheral nervous system (PNS), the neuromuscular junction, or skeletal muscle, all of which are components of the motor unit. Damage to any of these structures can cause muscle atrophy and wea ...
, the Chudnovsky family applied in 1976 for permission to emigrate from the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
.
Although the family was harassed by the
KGB for attempting to leave the country, the brothers were eventually able to secure their emigration with the help of
United States Senator
The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States.
The composition and po ...
Henry M. Jackson
Henry Martin "Scoop" Jackson (May 31, 1912 – September 1, 1983) was an American lawyer and politician who served as a U.S. representative (1941–1953) and U.S. senator (1953–1983) from the state of Washington. A Cold War liberal and anti ...
and mathematician
Edwin Hewitt.
A 1992 article in ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'' quoted the opinion of several mathematicians that Gregory Chudnovsky was one of the world's best living mathematicians. David Chudnovsky works closely with and assists his brother Gregory, who has
myasthenia gravis
Myasthenia gravis (MG) is a long-term neuromuscular junction disease that leads to varying degrees of skeletal muscle weakness. The most commonly affected muscles are those of the eyes, face, and swallowing. It can result in double vision, ...
.
Despite their accomplishments and the attention brought to them by their profile in ''The New Yorker'', the Chudnovsky brothers largely worked alone for decades. A 1997
Karen Arenson article in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' theorized that this was due to some combination of the brothers' lack of a specialization (they worked on topics including
number theory
Number theory (or arithmetic or higher arithmetic in older usage) is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and integer-valued functions. German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) said, "Ma ...
,
applied physics
Applied physics is the application of physics to solve scientific or engineering problems. It is usually considered to be a bridge or a connection between physics and engineering.
"Applied" is distinguished from "pure" by a subtle combination ...
and
computers
A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These prog ...
), Gregory's medical condition, their refusal to leave
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
and their insistence on being hired together. In the summer of 1997, they were hired as professors at
Polytechnic University in
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
after
borough president Howard Golden helped find funding for their salaries.
The Chudnovsky brothers have held records, at different times, for computing
to the largest number of places, including two billion digits in the early 1990s on a supercomputer they built (dubbed "m-zero") in their apartment in
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
. In 1987, the Chudnovsky brothers developed the algorithm (now called the
Chudnovsky algorithm
The Chudnovsky algorithm is a fast method for calculating the digits of , based on Ramanujan’s formulae. It was published by the Chudnovsky brothers in 1988.
It was used in the world record calculations of 2.7 trillion digits of in Decembe ...
) that they used to break several computation records. Today, this algorithm is used by
Mathematica
Wolfram Mathematica is a software system with built-in libraries for several areas of technical computing that allow machine learning, statistics, symbolic computation, data manipulation, network analysis, time series analysis, NLP, optimiza ...
to calculate , and has continued to be used by others who have achieved
world record
A world record is usually the best global and most important performance that is ever recorded and officially verified in a specific skill, sport, or other kind of activity. The book ''Guinness World Records'' and other world records organization ...
s
in pi calculation.
The brothers also assisted the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
around 2003 in the merging of a series of digital photographs taken of ''
The Hunt of the Unicorn
''The Hunt of the Unicorn'' or the ''Unicorn Tapestries'' (french: La Chasse à la licorne) is a series of seven tapestries made in the South Netherlands around 1495–1505, and now in The Cloisters in New York. They were possibly designed in ...
'' tapestries during their cleaning.
PBS aired a program on its science show ''
Nova
A nova (plural novae or novas) is a transient astronomical event that causes the sudden appearance of a bright, apparently "new" star (hence the name "nova", which is Latin for "new") that slowly fades over weeks or months. Causes of the dramat ...
'', hosted by
Robert Krulwich
Robert Louis Krulwich (born August 5, 1947) is an American radio and television journalist who currently serves as a science correspondent for NPR and was a co-host of the program ''Radiolab''. He has worked as a full-time employee of ABC, CBS ...
, that described the difficulties in photographing the tapestries and the math used to fix them.
The brothers later became Distinguished Industry Professors at the
New York University Tandon School of Engineering
The New York University Tandon School of Engineering (commonly referred to as Tandon) is the engineering and applied sciences school of New York University. Tandon is the second oldest private engineering and technology school in the United Sta ...
, where they work on subjects such as
graph isomorphism
In graph theory, an isomorphism of graphs ''G'' and ''H'' is a bijection between the vertex sets of ''G'' and ''H''
: f \colon V(G) \to V(H)
such that any two vertices ''u'' and ''v'' of ''G'' are adjacent in ''G'' if and only if f(u) and f(v) ar ...
.
[https://engineering.nyu.edu/our-engineers/faculty/chudnovsky-brothers] Gregory was awarded the
MacArthur Fellowship
The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 indi ...
(also known as the "Genius Grant") in 1981.
References
External links
*
* NYU faculty page
* NYU faculty page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chudnovsky
1947 births
1952 births
20th-century American mathematicians
20th-century Ukrainian mathematicians
Living people
MacArthur Fellows
Scientists from Kyiv
Pi-related people
Polytechnic Institute of New York University faculty
Sibling duos
Ukrainian Jews
Engineers from Kyiv
21st-century Ukrainian engineers