Abram Ilyich Fet
| Abram Fet | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
5 December 1924 Odessa, USSR |
| Died | 30 July 2007 (aged 82) Novosibirsk, Russia |
| Residence | Novosibirsk, Russia |
| Fields | Mathematics, Physics |
| Institutions |
Sobolev Institute of Mathematics Novosibirsk State University |
| Alma mater |
Tomsk University Moscow University |
| Notable students | V. Toponogov |
Abram Fet (Russian: Абрам Ильич Фет) (5 December 1924, Odessa, — 30 July 2007, Novosibirsk) – a Russian mathematician, philosopher, translator.
Abram Fet was born on 5 December 1924 in Odessa into a family of Ilya Fet and Revekka Nikolayevskaya. Ilya Fet was a medical doctor; he was born and grew in Rovno and studied medicine in Paris. Revekka was a housewife; she grew in Odessa. Fet’s father often changed jobs, moving with his family over Ukraine looking for places where to escape starvation, and the children had to change schools. In 1936, the family settled in Odessa. There Abram Fet finished high school at the age of 15 and entered the Odessa Institute of Communications Engineering. He had hardly finished the first year when the Second World War broke out. Fet’s family was evacuated to Siberia, to the Tomsk region. In 1941, Fet entered the Mathematics Department of Tomsk University, where he was admitted to the second year of studies. At that time, many professors evacuated from European Russia were teaching at the local university, among them Petr Rashchevsky who advised him in 1946 to continue his education in Moscow University. There Fet attended the seminars of Gelfand, Pontryagin, and Novikov and started to specialize in topology on advice of Vilenkin, under supervision of Lazar Lusternik.
In December 1948, Fet defended his Candidate Thesis named "A Homology Ring of Closed Curve Space on a Sphere", which was recognized as an outstanding contribution by the mathematicians of Moscow University. After graduation, he started working in Tomsk University as a junior lecturer and then an associate professor of the Calculus Department. Among others, he taught V. Toponogov and S. Alber. Beginning from 1955, Fet worked in various colleges of Novosibirsk. In 1960, he got employed as a senior researcher in the Ceometry and Topology Department of the newly established Institute of Mathematics of the Siberian Division of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. At the same time, he also taught at the new Novosibirsk University.
In November 1967, he defended a doctorate at Moscow University named "A Periodic Problem of Variational Calculus", focused around Fet’s theorem about two closed geodesic arcs, which became classical.
In 1968, Fet signed the "Letter of 46" in defense of imprisoned dissidents, which became the reason for his dismissal both from the research institute and from the university. The real reason, though, was not the very fact of signing the letter but his independent character and straightforwardness with which he spoke about the professional and human qualities of his co-workers, about the intrigues of functionaries in science and about the privileges in Academgorodok (a limited-access grocery shop for residents, a special medical center and other privileges for the science town management and for doctors of sciences and their families). During four years, from October 1968 to June 1972, Fet was unemployed, earning his living by doing technical translations and translating mathematical books from different languages, which his friends arranged for him, and continued his research.
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