Leonid Nisonovich Vaserstein () is a

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

- 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, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

, currently

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

Mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

Penn State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsyl ...

. His research is focused on

algebra Algebra is a branch of mathematics that deals with abstract systems, known as algebraic structures, and the manipulation of expressions within those systems. It is a generalization of arithmetic that introduces variables and algebraic ope ...

and

dynamical systems In mathematics, a dynamical system is a system in which a Function (mathematics), function describes the time dependence of a Point (geometry), point in an ambient space, such as in a parametric curve. Examples include the mathematical models ...

. He is well known for providing a simple proof of the

Quillen–Suslin theorem The Quillen–Suslin theorem, also known as Serre's problem or Serre's conjecture, is a theorem in commutative algebra concerning the relationship between free modules and projective modules over polynomial rings. In the geometric setting it is ...

, a result in

commutative algebra Commutative algebra, first known as ideal theory, is the branch of algebra that studies commutative rings, their ideal (ring theory), ideals, and module (mathematics), modules over such rings. Both algebraic geometry and algebraic number theo ...

, first conjectured by

Jean-Pierre Serre Jean-Pierre Serre (; born 15 September 1926) is a French mathematician who has made contributions to algebraic topology, algebraic geometry and algebraic number theory. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1954, the Wolf Prize in 2000 and the inau ...

in 1955, and then proved by

Daniel Quillen Daniel Gray Quillen (June 22, 1940 – April 30, 2011) was an American mathematician. He is known for being the "prime architect" of higher algebraic ''K''-theory, for which he was awarded the Cole Prize in 1975 and the Fields Medal in 1978. Fr ...

and

Andrei Suslin Andrei Suslin (, sometimes transliterated Souslin) was a Russian mathematician who contributed to algebraic K-theory and its connections with algebraic geometry. He was a Trustee Chair and Professor of mathematics at Northwestern University. He ...

in 1976. Leonid Vaserstein got his

Master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional prac ...

and

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''doctor'', meaning "teacher") or doctoral degree is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism '' licentia docendi'' ("licence to teach ...

Moscow State University Moscow State University (MSU), officially M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University,. is a public university, public research university in Moscow, Russia. The university includes 15 research institutes, 43 faculties, more than 300 departments, a ...

, where he was until 1978. He then moved to

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

and the

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. Alternate forms of the last name: Vaseršteĭn, Vasershtein, Wasserstein. The

Wasserstein metric In mathematics, the Wasserstein distance or Kantorovich– Rubinstein metric is a distance function defined between probability distributions on a given metric space M. It is named after Leonid Vaseršteĭn. Intuitively, if each distribution ...

was named after him by R.L. Dobrushin in 1970.

Biography

Leonid Vaserstein grew up in the Soviet Union. In secondary school he won the second prize in the All-Russian High School Mathematical Olympiad. Vaserstein got his undergraduate, masters (1966), and doctoral degrees (1969) in mathematics from Moscow State University, where he worked as a lecturer concurrently with his doctoral research. After his doctoral graduation he worked for the Moscow State University-associated "Informelectro" Institute, a

Federal State Unitary Enterprise A unitary enterprise () is a government-owned corporation in Russia and some other post-Soviet states. Unitary enterprises are business entities that have no ownership rights to the assets that they use in their operations. This form is possible ...

focused on ways to develop industries in Russia with emphases on electrical engineering, energy efficiency, and environmental technologies like greenhouse gas mitigation. He started as a senior researcher for Informelectro and continued working there until 1978, eventually becoming head of his department. In 1978 and 1979 he made his way to the United States of America by way of Europe, taking a series of visiting professor positions at the

University of Bielefeld Bielefeld University () is a public university in Bielefeld, Germany. Founded in 1969, it is one of the country's newer universities, and considers itself a "reform" university, following a different style of organization and teaching than the e ...

Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques The Institut des hautes études scientifiques (IHÉS; English: Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies) is a French research institute supporting advanced research in mathematics and theoretical physics (also with a small theoretical biology g ...

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

, and

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

. In 1979, Vaserstein took a full-time position as a professor in the Department of Mathematics at

. Vaserstein's research interests extend across the areas of

topology Topology (from the Greek language, Greek words , and ) is the branch of mathematics concerned with the properties of a Mathematical object, geometric object that are preserved under Continuous function, continuous Deformation theory, deformat ...

, algebra, and

number theory Number theory is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and arithmetic functions. Number theorists study prime numbers as well as the properties of mathematical objects constructed from integers (for example ...

, and the applications of these areas, including classical groups over rings,

algebraic K-theory Algebraic ''K''-theory is a subject area in mathematics with connections to geometry, topology, ring theory, and number theory. Geometric, algebraic, and arithmetic objects are assigned objects called ''K''-groups. These are groups in the sens ...

, systems with local interactions, and optimization and planning. Additionally, Vaserstein maintains the Penn State University Math Department's website on Algebra and Number Theory.

Selected publications

* * * * * * * *

References

External links

*
A web page about Leonid N. Vaserstein's publications

Leonid N. Vaserstein home page
Living people Moscow State University alumni Russian mathematicians Pennsylvania State University faculty Year of birth missing (living people) {{Russia-mathematician-stub

Biography

Selected publications

See also

References

External links