Background
Dmitri Egorov was born on December 22, 1869 in Moscow, Russian Empire. His parents were Fedor Ivanovich Egorov, the Director of the Moscow Teachers' Institute, and Olga Nikolaevna Makhova, the daughter of a Collegiate Councillor.
Lomonosov Moscow State University, GSP-1, Leninskie Gory, Moscow, 119991, Russian Federation
Egorov entered in 1887 Moscow University to study mathematics and physics. He graduated in 1891 having submitted his thesis Second-order confocal surfaces in a space of constant curvature.
Moscow Second Progymnasium, Moscow, Russian Federation
Egorov entered the fourth class of the Moscow Second Progymnasium and studied there for a year.
Sixth Moscow Gymnasium, Moscow, Russian Federation
Egorov studied at the Sixth Moscow Gymnasium where he attended the fifth and sixth year classes. He graduated from the Sixth Moscow Gymnasium in 1887 having been awarded the gold medal.
Lomonosov Moscow State University, GSP-1, Leninskie Gory, Moscow, 119991, Russian Federation
Egorov entered in 1887 Moscow University to study mathematics and physics. He graduated in 1891 having submitted his thesis Second-order confocal surfaces in a space of constant curvature.
Egorov was named the Honored Scientist of the RSFSR.
Дмитрий Егоров
Dmitri Egorov was born on December 22, 1869 in Moscow, Russian Empire. His parents were Fedor Ivanovich Egorov, the Director of the Moscow Teachers' Institute, and Olga Nikolaevna Makhova, the daughter of a Collegiate Councillor.
Egorov was educated at home for the first part of his life and only when he reached secondary school age did he begin his formal school education. He entered the fourth class of the Moscow Second Progymnasium, then moved to the Sixth Moscow Gymnasium where he attended the fifth and sixth year classes. He graduated from the Sixth Moscow Gymnasium in 1887 having been awarded the gold medal. Then he entered Moscow University to study mathematics and physics, enrolling later in 1887.
The teacher to influence him most at this time was Nicolai Vasilievich Bugaev but he also attended lectures from Alexandr Ivanovich Nekrasov, Nikolai Egorovich Zhukovsky, the geometer Vasilii Yakovlevich Tsinger, and the physicists Aleksandr Grigorievich Stoletov and Aleksei Petrovich Sokolov. He graduated in 1891 having submitted his thesis Second-order confocal surfaces in a space of constant curvature.
Egorov was a devoted teacher who taught at Gymnasium No. 5, Gymnasium No. 6 and the F. I. Kreiman Gymnasium in Moscow. He also taught at the Moscow College of Engineering, at the Moscow Teachers' Institute and at the Advanced Courses for Women. At Moscow University, before his appointment as a professor, he taught courses on the synthetic theory of conics, number theory, the geometrical theory of partial differential equations, the theory of determinants, and the theory of binary forms. After he was appointed as a professor, he taught courses on differential geometry, the integration of differential equations, integral equations, the calculus of variations, number theory, and the theory of surfaces.
Nikolai Nikolaevich Luzin was Egorov's first student and became a member of the school Egorov created in Moscow dealing with functions of a real variable. Egorov and Luzin are now considered as joint founders of the influential Moscow School of Pure Mathematics. In 1917 Egorov became secretary of the Moscow Mathematical Society. Then in 1921 he was elected vice-president, becoming president the following year. In 1923 Egorov became director of the Institute for Mechanics and Mathematics at Moscow State University which had been founded two years earlier. Also in 1923 Egorov was appointed as Chairman of the Mathematics Syllabus Commission of Moscow University. At this time he was one of the most influential mathematicians in Russia, exerting a major influence as a researcher, an administrator and as a teacher. However the Russian Revolution of 1917 had set in motion a political system which began to see Egorov as a problem.
In 1919 the Church of St Tatiana the Martyr, the Moscow University church, was closed by the university authorities. Egorov was highly critical of this action. In 1922-1923 there was a mass execution of clergy and in 1928 the attack was renewed. From within mathematics, Ernst Kolman was a Marxist who began to attack Egorov. A university professor was poorly paid at this time, and Egorov had been teaching part-time at the Civil Engineering Institute in Moscow from the early 1920s to supplement his income. Kolman, in 1924, attacked Egorov at a meeting in the Engineering Institute.
Soon after this Egorov was dismissed from his position at the Institute and Nikolai Grigorievich Chebotaryov was appointed to fill the vacant position. Chebotaryov was a supporter of the Soviet system but once he realised that he had been appointed because Egorov, who he idealised as a mathematician, had been dismissed for political reasons he became unhappy and resigned the position. Now Egorov was still in a position of power in the Moscow Mathematical Society and he tried to shelter academics who had been dismissed from their posts. He tried to prevent the attempt to impose Marxist methodology on scientists. The USSR Academy of Sciences seemed at first to offer Egorov their support; his position was greatly weakened, however, when his own students turned against him.
In the spring of 1930 Egorov was dismissed as director of the Institute for Mechanics and Mathematics and given a public rebuke. In September of the same year he was arrested as a "religious sectarian" and put in prison. The Moscow Mathematical Society continued to support Egorov, refusing to expel him, and those who presented papers at the next meeting, including Aleksandr Gennadievich Kurosh, were to be expelled by an "Initiative group" who took over the Society in November 1930. They expelled Egorov denouncing him as a reactionary and a churchman.
Egorov spent a short time in prison in Moscow, then was sent to prison in Kazan. He went on a hunger strike in prison and eventually, by this time close to death, he was taken to the prison hospital in Kazan. Chebotaryov's wife, Maria Smirnitskaia, was working as a doctor in the prison hospital and she recognised the famous mathematician. He was too ill to be saved, but Maria Smirnitskaia signed Egorov's death certificate before his death and told the guards that he had died. She then took him to her own home where he died the following day in Chebotaryov's arms. Egorov was buried in the Arsky Cemetery in Kazan after a funeral attended only by Chebotaryov and Egorov's wife.
Egorov held spiritual beliefs to be of great importance, and openly defended the Church against Marxist supporters after the Russian Revolution.
Egorov was a corresponding member of the USSR Academy and member of the Moscow Mathematical Society; in 1902 he was elected to the French Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Society of Berlin University.