Ilya Nikolaevich Bronshtein (Russian: , German: , also written as ; born 1903, died 1976) was a Russian
applied 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, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...
and
historian of mathematics
The history of mathematics deals with the origin of discoveries in mathematics and the mathematical methods and notation of the past. Before the modern age and the worldwide spread of knowledge, written examples of new mathematical developments ...
.
Work and life
Bronshtein taught at the
Moscow State Technical University
The Bauman Moscow State Technical University, BMSTU (russian: link=no, Московский государственный технический университет им. Н. Э. Баумана (МГТУ им. Н. Э. Баумана)), some ...
(MAMI), then the State College of Mechanical Engineering, on the Chair of Advanced Mathematics established in 1939. He also collaborated at the
Zhukovsky Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute.
With
Dmitrii Abramovich Raikov
Dmitrii Abramovich Raikov (Russian: , born 11 November 1905 in Odessa; died 1980 in Moscow) was a Russian mathematician who studied functional analysis.
Raikov studied in Odessa and Moscow, graduating in 1929. He was secretary of the Komsomol a ...
, Bronshtein authored a Russian handbook on elementary mathematics, mechanics and physics (), which was published in 1943.
Bronshtein is known as the author of a handbook of mathematics for engineers and students of technical universities,
which he wrote together with
Konstantin Adolfovic Semendyayev around the 1939/1940 timeframe.
Hot lead typesetting for the work had already started when the
Siege of Leningrad
The siege of Leningrad (russian: links=no, translit=Blokada Leningrada, Блокада Ленинграда; german: links=no, Leningrader Blockade; ) was a prolonged military blockade undertaken by the Axis powers against the Soviet city of L ...
prohibited further development and the
print matrices were relocated.
After the
war
War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...
, they were first considered lost, but could be found again years later, so that the first edition of could finally be published in 1945.
This was a major success and went through eleven editions in Russia and was translated into various languages, including German and English, until the publisher
Nauka planned to replace it with a translation of the American
Mathematical Handbook for Scientists and Engineers
Theresa Marie Korn (née McLaughlin, November 5, 1926 – April 9, 2020) was an American engineer, radio enthusiast, and airplane pilot. The first woman to earn an engineering degree from what is now Carnegie Mellon University, she was the autho ...
by
Granino and
Theresa M. Korn in 1968.
However, in a parallel development starting in 1970, the so called "
Bronshtein and Semendyayev
''Bronshtein and Semendyayev'' (often just ''Bronshtein'' or ''Bronstein'', sometimes ''BS'') is the informal name of a comprehensive handbook of fundamental working knowledge of mathematics and table of formulas originally compiled by the Rus ...
" (BS), which had been translated into German in 1958, underwent a major overhaul by a team of
East-German authors around Günter Grosche, Viktor & Dorothea Ziegler (of
University of Leipzig
Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 Decemb ...
), to which Bronshtein himself could no longer contribute due to reasons of age.
This was published in 1979 and spawned translations into many other languages as well, including a retranslation into Russian and an English edition. In 1986, the 13th Russian edition was published. The German '
Wende' and the later
reunification
A political union is a type of political entity which is composed of, or created from, smaller polities, or the process which achieves this. These smaller polities are usually called federated states and federal territories in a federal governm ...
led to considerable changes in the publishing environment in Germany between 1989 and 1991, which eventually resulted in two independent German publishing branches by
Eberhard Zeidler Eberhard Zeidler may refer to:
* Eberhard Heinrich Zeidler (1926–2022), German-Canadian architect
* Eberhard Hermann Erich Zeidler (1940–2016), German mathematician
{{hndis, Zeidler, Eberhard ...
(published 1995–2013) and by & Heiner Mühlig (published 1992–2020) to expand and maintain the work up to the present, again with translations into many other languages including English.
Publications
*
* With Semendyayev: "Handbook of Mathematics for Engineers and Students of Technical Universities" (
Справочник по математике для инженеров и учащихся втузов), Moscow, 1945
See also
*
Bronshtein and Semendyayev
''Bronshtein and Semendyayev'' (often just ''Bronshtein'' or ''Bronstein'', sometimes ''BS'') is the informal name of a comprehensive handbook of fundamental working knowledge of mathematics and table of formulas originally compiled by the Rus ...
(BS)
*
Konstantin Adolfovic Semendyayev
References
Further reading
*
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bronshtein, Ilya Nikolaevich
Soviet mathematicians
Academic staff of Bauman Moscow State Technical University
Soviet historians