Vyacheslav STEPANOV, Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics Mathematician. professor from 1928. Stalin Prize (1951). correspondent member, Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics Academy of Sciences from 1946.
Background
Stepanov was the son of teachers and from 1908 to 1912 studied mathematics at the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of Moscow State University, where in 1912 he received his Candidate of Science degree with Dmitri Egorov as thesis supervisor.
Education
In 1912 he undertook further study at the University of Göttingen where he attended lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert.
Career
Stepanov was also strongly influenced by Nikolai Lusin. In 1915 he returned to Moscow and became a docent at Moscow State University, where he worked closely with Egorov until 1929 when Egorov was dismissed from his position as director of the Institute of Mechanics and Mathematics. In 1928 Stepanov became a professor at Moscow State University and then in 1939 also the Director of the Institute of Mechanics and Mathematics, where he continued until his death in 1950.
In two publications (1923 and 1925) Stepanov gave necessary and sufficient conditions for a function of two variables, defined on a set South of measure greater than zero, to have a total differential almost everywhere on South. He also worked on dynamical systems (extending the work of George Birkhoff), the qualitative theory of ordinary differential equations, and almost periodic functions (extending the work of Harald Bohr).
In the qualitative theory of ordinary differential equations Stepanov wrote a well-known textbook with his student Viktor Nemytskii. In addition to Nemytskii, his doctoral students include Alexander Gelfond.
Religion
Religion obstructs scientific research and technological progress.
Views
Marxism–Leninism as the only truth could not, by its very nature, become outdated.
Membership
Russian Academy of Sciences. Academy of Sciences of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics]
In 1946 Stepanov became a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.