Sergey Borisovich Stechkin (russian: Серге́й Бори́сович Сте́чкин) (6 September 1920 – 22 November 1995) was a prominent

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, ...

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 ...

who worked in theory of functions (especially in

approximation theory In mathematics, approximation theory is concerned with how function (mathematics), functions can best be approximation, approximated with simpler functions, and with quantitative property, quantitatively characterization (mathematics), characteri ...

) and

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 arithmetic function, integer-valued functions. German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777� ...

Biography

Sergey Stechkin was born on 6 September 1920 in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

. His father (

Boris Stechkin Boris Sergeyevich Stechkin (1891–1969) was a Russian Empire scientist, engineer and inventor. He developed a theory of heat engines and was involved in construction of many Soviet aircraft engines. He was also co-developer of Sikorsky Ilya Murom ...

) was a Soviet

turbojet The turbojet is an airbreathing jet engine which is typically used in aircraft. It consists of a gas turbine with a propelling nozzle. The gas turbine has an air inlet which includes inlet guide vanes, a compressor, a combustion chamber, and ...

engine designer, academician. His great uncle, N.Ye. Zhukovsky, was the founding father of modern aero- and

hydrodynamics In physics and engineering, fluid dynamics is a subdiscipline of fluid mechanics that describes the flow of fluids—liquids and gases. It has several subdisciplines, including ''aerodynamics'' (the study of air and other gases in motion) and ...

. His maternal grandfather, N.A. Shilov, was a notable chemist. His paternal grandfather was Sergey Solomin, a science fiction author. Stechkin attended school 58 and then attempted to matriculate to

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 ...

. He was turned down, likely due to the fact that the Soviet regime viewed his father as a political dissident at the time. He matriculated to Gorky State University instead. A year later, he was nevertheless able to transfer to the Mechanics and Mathematics department at Moscow State University, where he studied mathematics and was a student of D. E. Menshov. Stechkin received his PhD in 1948 with a dissertation titled "On the order of best approximations of continuous functions". Later he worked as a mathematician at the

Steklov Institute of Mathematics Steklov Institute of Mathematics or Steklov Mathematical Institute (russian: Математический институт имени В.А.Стеклова) is a premier research institute based in Moscow, specialized in mathematics, and a part ...

in Moscow. He was the founder and first director of the department of the Institute in

Yekaterinburg Yekaterinburg ( ; rus, Екатеринбург, p=jɪkətʲɪrʲɪnˈburk), alternatively romanized as Ekaterinburg and formerly known as Sverdlovsk ( rus, Свердло́вск, , svʲɪrˈdlofsk, 1924–1991), is a city and the administra ...

. Later this department became the Institute of Mechanics and Mathematics at the Ural branch of the

Russian Academy of Sciences The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; russian: Росси́йская акаде́мия нау́к (РАН) ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across t ...

. Stechkin founded, and, for more than 20 years, served as editor-in-chief for the mathematical journal “

Mathematical Notes ''Mathematical Notes'' is a peer-reviewed mathematical journal published by Springer Science+Business Media on behalf of the Russian Academy of Sciences that covers all aspects of mathematics. It is an English language translation of the Russian- ...

” (russian: Математические заметки). Stechkin served as professor of mathematics at

and his honors include the Chebyshev Award of the

in 1993. He died in 1995 in Moscow from age-related chronic illness. His contribution to mathematics include the generalization of

Jackson's inequality In approximation theory, Jackson's inequality is an inequality bounding the value of function's best approximation by algebraic or trigonometric polynomials in terms of the modulus of continuity or modulus of smoothness of the function or of it ...

for all

L_p

spaces.

References

External links

* 1920 births 1995 deaths 20th-century Russian mathematicians Soviet mathematicians Moscow State University alumni Academic staff of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology {{Russia-mathematician-stub