Veniamin Kagan
| Veniamin Kagan | |
|---|---|
| Born | Veniamin Fedorovich Kagan 10 March 1869 Šiauliai, Russian Empire |
| Died | 8 May 1953 (aged 84) Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | Moscow State University |
| Alma mater | Odessa State University |
| Doctoral advisor |
Andrey Markov Konstantin Posse |
| Doctoral students |
Yakov Dubnov Grigorii Gurevich Petr Rashevskii Viktor Wagner Isaak Yaglom |
Veniamin Fedorovich Kagan (Russian: Вениами́н Фёдорович Ка́ган; 10 March 1869 – 8 May 1953) was a Russian and Soviet mathematician and expert in geometry. He is the maternal grandfather of mathematicians Yakov Sinai and Grigory Barenblatt.
Kagan was born in Shavli, Russian Empire (now Šiauliai, Lithuania) in 1869, to a poor Ashkenazi Jewish family. In 1871 his family moved to Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipropetrovsk), where he grew up. Kagan entered the Imperial Novorossiya University in Odessa in 1887, but was expelled for revolutionary activities in 1889. He was put on probation and sent back to Yekaterinoslav. He studied mathematics on his own and in 1892 passed the state exam at Kiev University.
In 1894 Kagan moved to St Petersburg where he continued his studies with Andrey Markov and Konstantin Posse. They tried to help him to obtain an academic position, but Kagan's Jewish background was an obstacle. Only in 1897 was he allowed to become a dozent at the Imperial Novorossiya University, where he continued to work until 1923. His students in the theory of relativity class he taught in 1921-22 included Nikolaj Papaleksi, Alexander Frumkin and Igor Tamm. Kagan worked at Moscow State University where he held the Geometry Chair from 1923 till 1952.
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