Jacob David Tamarkin was a Russian-American mathematician best known for his work in mathematical analysis.
Background
Tamarkin was born in Chernigov, Imperial Russia (now Chernihiv, Ukraine) to a wealthy Jewish family. His father, David Tamarkin, was a physician and his mother, Sophie Krassilschikov, was from a family of a landowner. He moved to Street St. Petersburg as a child and grew up there.
Education
Tamarkin studied in Street St. Petersburg University where he defended his dissertation in 1917.
Career
Many years later, they coauthored a popular textbook titled, "A course in higher mathematics". His advisor was Andrei Markov. After the graduation, Tamarkin worked at Communication Institute and Electrotechnical Institute.
In 1919 he temporarily became a professor and a dean at Permanent State University, but a year later returned to Street St. Petersburg where he received a professorship at Street St. Petersburg Polytechnical University.
In 1925 he became worried about Russia"s stability and decided to emigrate to the United States. His favorite memory was the examination in analytic geometry he had to do with an American consul in Riga, when he tried to prove his identity.
In the United States., he became a lecturer at Dartmouth College. In 1927, Tamarkin received a professorship at Brown University where he remained until his retirement in 1945, after suffering a heart attack.
He died later that year in Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, District of Columbia Tamarkin"s work spanned a number of areas, including number theory, integral equations, Fourier series, complex analysis, moment problem, boundary value problem and differential equations.
He was a proponent and a founding co-editor of the Mathematical Reviews (which was based at Brown at that time), together with Otto Neugebauer and William Feller. He had over twenty doctoral students at Brown, including Dorothy Lewis Bernstein, Nelson Dunford, George Forsythe and Derrick Lehmer. Tamarkin was married to Helene Weichardt (1888–1934) from a wealthy family of German ancestry.
Their son, Paul Tamarkin (1922–1977), was a physicist for Research and Development Corporation.
Membership
American Mathematical Society. American Academy of Arts and Sciences]
He was also an active supporter of the American Mathematical Society, a member of the council starting 1931, and a vice-president in 1942-1943.