Kolmogorov was a Soviet mathematician and educator, renowned for his work in the theory of probability.
Background
Kolmogorov was born on April 25, 1903 in Tambov, Russia. His unmarried mother, Maria Y. Kolmogorova, died giving birth to him. Andrey was raised by two of his aunts in Tunoshna (near Yaroslavl) at the estate of his grandfather, a well-to-do nobleman. Little is known about Andrey's father. He was supposedly named Nikolai Matveevich Kataev and had been an agronomist. Nikolai had been exiled from St. Petersburg to the Yaroslavl province after his participation in the revolutionary movement against the czars. He disappeared in 1919 and he was presumed to have been killed in the Russian Civil War.
Education
In 1925 Kolmogorov graduated from Moscow State University and joined the faculty of physics and mathematics as a research associate.
Career
Kolmogorov became a professor in 1931, a post he held until his death. In 1933 he was appointed a director of the Institute of Mathematics at the university. Kolmogorov was elected a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1939. As chairman of the academy's committee on mathematical education he played a leading role in overhauling the teaching of mathematics in the Soviet Union. He was a foreign member of scientific societies worldwide and the recipient of many honors, including the Order of Lenin, in his homeland. He died in Moscow on October 20, 1987. Kolmogorov was one of the outstanding mathematicians of his generation, making fundamental contributions in fields as varied as the theory of functions, mathematical logic, mechanics, and differential equations. His greatest single achievement, however, was in turning ideas of chance and probability into a rigorous mathematical system in the 1930's. His work here, which often spilled over into physics, is central to the study of probability today. Kolmogorov used probability to create a powerful technique, based on the observation of random events, to make predictions. The technique was applied to a wide range of problems, such as that of landing an airplane on an aircraft carrier bobbing in the sea by calculating the likely position of the carrier at a given instant. Kolmogorov's 1933 treatise on probability, which appeared in English translation under the title Foundations of the Theory of Probability, is a classic on the subject.
Achievements
Kolmogorov made significant contributions to the mathematics of probability theory, topology, intuitionistic logic, turbulence, classical mechanics, algorithmic information theory and computational complexity.
Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1939), Foreign Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (1963), Foreign Member of the Royal Society (1964)
Connections
Kolmogorov married Anna Dmitrievna Egorova in 1942. Their marriage lasted 45 years, but they didn't have any children.
