Background
Schein was born in Moscow on June 22, 1938, but moved to Saratov during World World War World War II
Schein was born in Moscow on June 22, 1938, but moved to Saratov during World World War World War II
Schein did his undergraduate studies in Mechanics-Mathematics at Saratov State, and chose to specialize in geometry, Wagner"s subject.
He became interested in mathematics as a teenager, and came under the influence of Viktor Wagner, a professor of mathematics at Saratov State University. In 1958 he solved the problem of characterizing the semigroups that could be embedded into an inverse semigroup. He graduated summa cum laude in 1960.
In 1968, Schein was one of the founding editors of the journal Semigroup Forum, published by Springer-Verlag.
Eventually, in the late 1970s, his mentor Wagner retired from the university and Schein was dismissed. In 1980, he took his present position at the University of Arkansas.
However, in the 1970s his connections with Western mathematicians led to political difficulties, his correspondence with mathematicians outside the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics was cut off, and his students were prevented from graduating. In 2011, Schein was named a distinguished reviewer of Zentralblatt MATH by the European Mathematical Society.
He continued working as a graduate student with Wagner, and in 1962 defended a candidacy dissertation on semigroups of transformations at the Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia in Saint St. Petersburg. He accepted a faculty position at Saratov in 1963, and defended his Doctor of Philosophy theses in 1966, again at Herzen State Pedagogical University.