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Armenia Honors Mathematician Dmitry Mirimanoff

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  • Armenia Honors Mathematician Dmitry Mirimanoff

    ARMENIA HONORS MATHEMATICIAN DMITRY MIRIMANOFF

    The Armenian
    Monday, September 26, 2011

    Yerevan - Armenia will pay tribute to Dmitry Mirimanoff (1861-1945),
    Russia-born mathematician of Armenian descent who earned international
    acclaim and debated fundamental theories with Albert Einstein, but
    has been largely unknown to Armenians.

    The special conference timed to the 150th anniversary of Mirimanoff's
    birth is being co-organized by the Yerevan State University, Armenia's
    Academy of Sciences and the Mathematics Society.

    The conference will involve two of Mirimanoff's descendants living
    in Switzerland and a number of accomplished scientists from Armenia
    and abroad, including Vahe Gurzadyan of Yerevan Physics Institute
    and French mathematician Guy Terjanian.

    "A couple of years ago Dr. Patrick Mirimanoff, who is Dmitry
    Mirimanoff's grandson, became interested in his roots and this is
    how I discovered his grandfather," Pavel Galoumian who initiated the
    conference idea told The Armenian Reporter.

    "My first impression was that he was an outstanding mathematician
    completely unknown in Armenia," said Galoumian, a physicist by training
    who previously worked in the field in Armenia and Switzerland.

    >From Tiflis to Geneva by way of Russia

    Born September 13, 1861 in the Russian town of Pereslavl-Zalessky,
    Dmitry Mirimanoff was a son of engineer Semyon Mirimanovich Mirimanov
    and Maria Dmitriyevna Rudakova from a noble Russian family who were
    land owners in the area.

    Mirimanovs (Mirimanians) were one of the most prominent Tiflis
    (Tbilisi) families, with two of its representatives serving as city
    mayors in the mid-19th century. The family settled in Tiflis more
    than a century earlier and is believed to have relocated from the
    Armenian community in New Julfa, Iran.

    Dmitry Mirimanoff left Russia in 1880 to pursue university studies in
    Italy and France. In France, he first enrolled at the University of
    Montpellier and then the University of Paris, where he was taught by
    some of the greatest mathematicians of the time, including Jean-Claude
    Bouquet, Emile Picard, Paul Emile Appell, Charles Hermite and Henri
    Poincare. In 1897, Mirimanoff was elected member of the Moscow
    Mathematical Society.

    In 1887 in Geneva Dmitry Mirimanoff married Malvina Geneviève Valentine
    Adriansen. They had two sons: Alexandre born in Oranienbaum (now
    Lomonossov, Russia) in 1898, and Andre born in Geneva in 1902.

    In 1900 Mirimanoff defended his doctoral theses and entered the faculty
    of the University of Geneva, first as privat-docent and rising to full
    professorship in 1931. That same year he was elected an honorary member
    of the Swiss Mathematical Society. He was honored "docteur honoris
    causa" at the University of Lausanne in 1937 and at the University
    of Lyon in 1942. Dmitry Mirimanoff died on 5 January 1945 in Geneva.

    Scientific heritage

    Main scientific works of Mirimanoff were devoted to the number theory,
    set theory and the theory of probability; he also contributed to
    the relativistic theory of the electron in the media. He was the
    author of sixty scientific publications many of them winning high
    scientific acclaim.

    His contributions and pioneering works are acknowledged in mathematical
    terminology as "Mirimanoff's paradox", "Kummer--Mirimanoff Congruences"
    and "Cauchy--Liouville--Mirimanoff Polynomials."

    In a 2001 book dedicated to Mirimanoff, Swiss mathematician Ernst
    Specker noted that "A highly original development of set theory
    began with Mirimanoff. Many of his results were unrecognized, then
    later obtained by and credited to others. We owe him, in particular,
    the definition of the 'Cantorian limit' of a set".

    In recent years Mirimanoff's role has been recognized by the Stanford
    Encyclopedia and in publications of Paul Taylor, Yvon Gauthier,
    Marc Renault and Donald Knuth.

    Exchange with Einstein

    In 1909, Mirimanoff published an article in the Berlin-based journal
    Annalen der Physik which drew the attention of Albert Einstein. The
    article devoted to the relativistic theory of electron in the media
    led to Einstein's "Comments on the work of D. Mirimanoff..." submitted
    to the same journal.

    The scientific exchange between Einstein and Mirimanoff continued in
    private with both scientists commenting on cutting edge theories of
    the day.

    Armenian impact

    Throughout the twentieth century several mathematicians of Armenian
    origin working abroad achieved remarkable results in number theory.

    Among them are Emil Artin (1898-1962), one of the leading algebraists
    of the century, Levon Khachatryan (1954-2002), who was recognized for
    contributions to set theory, number theory and cryptography, and Guy
    Terjanian famous for his contribution to the Fermat's last theorem.

    However, Dmitry Mirimanoff was probably the first modern mathematician
    of Armenian origin who left a profound imprint in the fundamental
    science. Today, Mirimanoff's accomplishments are being finally
    celebrated in the Armenian homeland.


    From: Baghdasarian
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