Tamarkin was born in Chernigov, Imperial Russia (now Chernihiv, Ukraine) in 1888 to a wealthy Jewish family. He was the only child of David and Sophy (Krassilschikoff) Tamarkin. His father was a physician; his mother belonged to the landed gentry. The family later moved to St. Petersburg, where the father had a flourishing practice.
J. D. (as he was known to his many friends) graduated from the Gymnasium of Emperor Alexander I in St. Petersburg in 1906. Among his classmates was the future physicist Alexander Alexandrovich Friedmann, who became Tamarkin's first collaborator and closest friend. Their early interest in number theory led to a joint paper on quadratic congruences and Bernoulli numbers (1906), for which the school awarded them gold medals.
Tamarkin and Friedmann continued working on number theory at the University of St. Petersburg, which they entered in 1906. After 1908 they came under the influence of the famous mathematician V. A. Steklov, who awakened their interest in mathematical physics; Tamarkin turned to boundary value problems, Friedmann to fluid mechanics.
Following his graduation from the University of St. Petersburg in 1910, Tamarkin accepted an academic position there and at a second institution, the School of Communications, while he carried out work for the Magister degree in applied mathematics. Although he seems to have passed his examination in 1912, his dissertation, on problems in the theory of ordinary linear differential equations, was delayed by the First World War and was not published until 1917.
Probably because of his bad eyesight, Tamarkin did not serve in the war. In 1913 he had added to his other teaching posts an instructorship at the Electro-Technical School, and in 1917 he became a professor at all three institutions.
After a brief interlude (1920 - 22) at the University of Perm, he returned to his professorships in what was then Petrograd and accepted a fourth, at the Naval Academy, probably because each position included a set of ration cards, an important consideration in these early years after the Russian Revolution.
Tamarkin had been a wealthy man before the revolution and had not only a large mathematical library but also a musical library and a collection of instruments sufficient for a small orchestra. (At one of his weekly musicales the young Shostakovich in 1924 played part of his first symphony. ) Both his background and his Menshevik views made Tamarkin suspect to the Bolshevik regime, and in 1924 he fled Russia, reaching the United States the next year.
After two years as a visiting lecturer at Dartmouth College, he was appointed to the faculty of Brown University (in 1927-28 as assistant professor, thereafter as professor), where his many-sided talents found full scope, bringing the university's mathematics department into a front-rank position. Tamarkin was an excellent lecturer--his lecture notes were mimeographed and widely circulated and quoted--and more than twenty students received their doctorates under his direction. His influence soon extended far beyond the Brown campus.
In the 1930's he played a prominent role in improving the quality of American mathematical periodicals, and his counsel was frequently sought in the affairs of the American Mathematical Society. He was also active in finding positions for German refugees.
Tamarkin was one of the early contributors to the theory of functional analysis and did much to make the new theory appreciated. He also worked on general theory of summability, summability of Fourier series, moment problems, Fourier and Laplace transforms, differential equations, boundary value problems, Green's functions, integral equations, mathematical physics, approximations, and abstract spaces. He read widely and was always willing to help students and friends with constructive criticism of their work. His warm hospitality was extended to mathematicians and musicians alike; his booming voice and contagious laughter enlivened many a scholarly gathering.
He retired from Brown after a heart attack in February 1945 and died the following November in the Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D. C. , of congestive heart failure.
In America Tamarkin remained a member of the Greek Orthodox Church.
He was married in Petrograd on November 14, 1919, to Helen Weichardt. They had one child, Paul, who became a physicist. The death of Tamarkin's wife in June 1934 was a severe blow and virtually put an end to his scientific activities.
He was a physician.
She was from a family of a landowner.
(1888–1934)
He was a physicist for RAND Corporation.
Alexander Alexandrovich Friedmann was a Russian and Soviet physicist and mathematician.
