Zorya Yakovlevna Shapiro (russian: Зоря Яковлевна Шапиро; 7 December 1914 – 4 July 2013) was a Soviet mathematician, educator and translator. She is known for her contributions to representation theory and functional analysis in her collaboration with

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� ...

, and the Shapiro-Lobatinski condition in elliptical boundary value problems.

Life

Zorya Shapiro attended the Moscow State University Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics from where she received her undergraduate and doctoral degrees by 1938. She was active in the military department of the university, especially in aviation, learning to fly and land aeroplanes. She started her teaching career at the Faculty, shortly after Zoya Kishkina (1917–1989) and Natalya Eisenstadt (1912–1985), and very quickly became recognized for her courses in analysis. Shapiro married

in 1942. They had 3 sons, one of whom died in childhood. Shapiro and Gelfand later divorced. In the 1980s, Shapiro lived in the same house as

Akiva Yaglom Akiva Moiseevich Yaglom (russian: Аки́ва Моисе́евич Ягло́м; 6 March 1921 – 13 December 2007) was a Soviet and Russian physicist, mathematician, statistician, and meteorologist. He was known for his contributions to the sta ...

. In 1991 Shapiro moved to

River Forest, Illinois River Forest is a suburban village adjacent to Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, U.S. Per the 2020 census, the population was 11,717. Two universities make their home in River Forest, Dominican University and Concordia University Chicago. The ...

to live with her younger son. She died there on 4 July 2013.

Career

Shapiro published several works on

representation theory Representation theory is a branch of mathematics that studies abstract algebraic structures by ''representing'' their elements as linear transformations of vector spaces, and studies modules over these abstract algebraic structures. In essen ...

. A contribution (with Gelfand) in integral geometry was to find inversion formulae for the reconstruction of the value of a function on a manifold in terms of integrals over a family of submanifolds, a result with applicability in

non-linear differential equations In mathematics and science, a nonlinear system is a system in which the change of the output is not proportional to the change of the input. Nonlinear problems are of interest to engineers, biologists, physicists, mathematicians, and many othe ...

tomography Tomography is imaging by sections or sectioning that uses any kind of penetrating wave. The method is used in radiology, archaeology, biology, atmospheric science, geophysics, oceanography, plasma physics, materials science, astrophysics, ...

, multi-dimensional complex analysis and other domains. Another work was on the representations of rotation groups of 3-dimensional spaces. Shapiro is best known for her elucidation of the conditions for well-defined solutions to the elliptical boundary value problem on

Sobolev spaces In mathematics, a Sobolev space is a vector space of functions equipped with a norm that is a combination of ''Lp''-norms of the function together with its derivatives up to a given order. The derivatives are understood in a suitable weak sense ...

Selected publications

Articles

* * * * (with I.M. Gelfand) * * (with I.M. Gelfand) * * (with I.M. Gelfand, M.I. Graev) * (with I.M. Gelfand, M.I. Graev) * (with I.M. Gelfand, M.I. Graev) * (with I.M. Gelfand, M.I. Graev) * (with I.M. Gelfand, S.G. Gindikin)

Books

* (with I.M. Gelfand, R.A. Minlos)

Translations

From French

From English

* *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shapiro, Zorya 1914 births 2013 deaths Soviet women mathematicians Soviet mathematicians Moscow State University alumni Academic staff of Moscow State University Soviet emigrants to the United States