Felix Alexandrovich Berezin (russian: Фе́ликс Алекса́ндрович Бере́зин; 25 April 1931 – 14 July 1980) was a

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

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 ...

and

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...

known for his contributions to the theory of

supersymmetry In a supersymmetric theory the equations for force and the equations for matter are identical. In theoretical and mathematical physics, any theory with this property has the principle of supersymmetry (SUSY). Dozens of supersymmetric theories e ...

and

supermanifold In physics and mathematics, supermanifolds are generalizations of the manifold concept based on ideas coming from supersymmetry. Several definitions are in use, some of which are described below. Informal definition An informal definition is com ...

s as well as to the

path integral formulation The path integral formulation is a description in quantum mechanics that generalizes the action principle of classical mechanics. It replaces the classical notion of a single, unique classical trajectory for a system with a sum, or functional in ...

quantum field theory In theoretical physics, quantum field theory (QFT) is a theoretical framework that combines classical field theory, special relativity, and quantum mechanics. QFT is used in particle physics to construct physical models of subatomic particles and ...

. Berezin studied at the

Moscow State University M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...

, but was not allowed to do his graduate studies there on account of his

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...

ish origin (his mother was Jewish). For the next three years Berezin taught at Moscow high schools. He continued to study mathematical physics under direction of

Israel Gelfand Israel Moiseevich Gelfand, also written Israïl Moyseyovich Gel'fand, or Izrail M. Gelfand ( yi, ישראל געלפֿאַנד, russian: Изра́иль Моисе́евич Гельфа́нд, uk, Ізраїль Мойсейович Гел� ...

. After

Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and Premier of the Soviet Union, chairm ...

's liberalization, he joined the Department of Mathematics at the Moscow State University at the age of 25. The

Berezin integral In mathematical physics, the Berezin integral, named after Felix Berezin, (also known as Grassmann integral, after Hermann Grassmann), is a way to define integration for functions of Grassmann variables (elements of the exterior algebra). It is n ...

over anticommuting Grassmann variables is named for him, as is the closely related construction of the

Berezinian In mathematics and theoretical physics, the Berezinian or superdeterminant is a generalization of the determinant to the case of supermatrices. The name is for Felix Berezin. The Berezinian plays a role analogous to the determinant when considerin ...

which may be regarded as the " super"-analog of the

determinant In mathematics, the determinant is a scalar value that is a function of the entries of a square matrix. It characterizes some properties of the matrix and the linear map represented by the matrix. In particular, the determinant is nonzero if and ...

. Berezin drowned during a summer trip in the region of

Kolyma Kolyma (russian: Колыма́, ) is a region located in the Russian Far East. It is bounded to the north by the East Siberian Sea and the Arctic Ocean, and by the Sea of Okhotsk to the south. The region gets its name from the Kolyma River an ...

Works

*''The Method of

Second Quantization Second quantization, also referred to as occupation number representation, is a formalism used to describe and analyze quantum many-body systems. In quantum field theory, it is known as canonical quantization, in which the fields (typically as t ...

'', Academic Press (1966). *''Introduction to Superanalysis'', Springer (1987).

References

* * (also availabl
in Russian
* * *

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Berezin, Felix 1931 births 1980 deaths Soviet mathematicians Soviet physicists Soviet inventors Deaths by drowning Moscow State University alumni Accidental deaths in the Soviet Union

Works

See also

References

External links