Pavel Urysohn | |
|---|---|
 Urysohnc. 1918-20 | |
| Born | Pavel Samuilovich Urysohn 3 February 1898 |
| Died | 17 August 1924(1924-08-17) (aged 26) Batz-sur-Mer, Pays de la Loire, France |
| Alma mater | Moscow State University (BS,PhD) |
| Years active | 1915-1924 |
| Known for | |
Pavel Samuilovich Urysohn (inRussian:Па́вел Самуи́лович Урысо́н; 3 February 1898 – 17 August 1924) was aSovietmathematician who is best known for his contributions indimension theory, and for developingUrysohn's metrization theorem andUrysohn's lemma, both of which are fundamental results intopology. He also constructed what is now called theUrysohn universal space[1] and his name is also commemorated in the termsFréchet–Urysohn space,Menger–Urysohn dimension andUrysohn integral equation. He andPavel Alexandrov formulated the modern definition ofcompactness in 1923.
Pavel Urysohn was born inOdesa in 1898.[2] His mother died when he was little, and he entered the care of his father and sister. The family moved toMoscow in 1912, where Urysohn completed his secondary education.[3] While still at school, he worked atShanyavsky University on an experimental project on X-ray radiation and was supervised byPetr Lazarev.[4][5]
At that time, Urysohn's interests lay predominantly in physics. Urysohn enrolled at the Moscow State University in 1915 and earned his Bachelor of Science in 1919.[2][3] There he attended the lectures ofNikolai Luzin andDimitri Egorov, which made him turn his attention to mathematics.[5][3][2] Between 1919 and 1921, Urysohn completed a doctorate on integral equations under the supervision of Luzin.[6] He then became an assistant professor atMoscow University, and Egorov prompted him to start working in topology.[2]
By 1922, Urysohn had given topological definitions to curve, surface, and dimension, and his work attracted the attention of many prominent European mathematicians.[2][5] In the summers of 1923 and 1924, Urysohn and his friend and fellow mathematician,Pavel Aleksandrov, traveled through France, Holland, and Germany, where they metDavid Hilbert,Felix Hausdorff, andL. E. J. Brouwer.[2] The three European mathematicians were impressed by Urysohn's work and expressed their hopes that he would visit them again in subsequent years.[7]
Urysohn and Aleksandrov were staying in a cottage inBrittany, France, when Urysohn drowned at the age of 26 while swimming off the coast nearbyBatz-sur-Mer.[2]
Urysohn's sister, Lina Neiman, wrote a memoir about his life and childhood. Not being a mathematician, she included in the book memorial articles about his mathematical works byPavel Alexandrov,Vadim Efremovich,Andrei Kolmogorov,Lazar Lyusternik, andMark Krasnosel'skii.[8]
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