In mathematics, the Markov brothers' inequality is an inequality proved in the 1890s by brothers Andrey Markov and Vladimir Markov, two Russian mathematicians. This inequality bounds the maximum of the derivatives of a polynomial on an interval in terms of the maximum of the polynomial. For k = 1 it was proved by Andrey Markov, and for k = 2,3,... by his brother Vladimir Markov.
Let P be a polynomial of degree ≤ n. Then
Equality is attained for Chebyshev polynomials of the first kind.
Markov's inequality is used to obtain lower bounds in computational complexity theory via the so-called "Polynomial Method".