Mathematics in Kharkov


Kharkov has been always regarded by the world mathematical community as one of the leading mathematical centers of Russia (before 1917), the Soviet Union (between 1917 and 1991), the former Soviet Union countries (FSU) after 1991. For instance, in a number of papers published by the American Mathematical Society in connection with organizing and implementing Society's grants program for the FSU, Kharkov is mentioned as the third center after Moscow and St.Petersburg. The same is with other foundations that support now Science in Fsu (the International Science Foundation (Soros), the INTAS (European Community), etc.)

Kharkov traditions of high level mathematical researches go back to the middle of the last century and associated with a number of well-known names, such as M.Ostrogradskii, A.Lyapunov, V.Steklov, S.Bernstein, D.Sincov, N.Akhiezer, B.Levin. Kharkov Mathematical Society - one of the first in Russia - was founded in 1879. These traditions resulted in internationally recognized mathematical schools in analysis (including complex analysis and approximation theory), geometry (differential geometry, global geometry, geometry of the Riemannian manifolds and algebraic geometry). functional analysis (both geometrical and analytical aspects), spectral theory (known also as spectral analysis), and a number of related topics and applications.

Mathematical achievements of these Kharkov mathematical schools being of great interest and importance in themselves always have the strong mathematical physics motivation and orientation. One may recall such names as Ostrogradskii, Lyapunov, Steklov. whose contributions to mathematical physics are widely regarded as classical ones.
These widely known features of Kharkov mathematicians have been becoming more pronounced in the fifties due to the influence of the strong theoretical physics school in Kharkov (founded by L.Landau who worked in Kharkov from 1929 to 1937) and due to the general world wide tendency of growth of the mathematical physics studies.

At present time, the Mathematical Division of the Institute for Low Temperature Physics and Engineering of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine plays the leading role in mathematical researches in Kharkov. The Division consists of 5 Departments: Geometry,Complex Analysis, Mathematical Physics, Mathematical Modeling of Physical Processes, and Statistical Methods in Mathematical Physics. The Departments collect most actively working mathematicians of the city, currying out high level mathematical researches in a wide range of topics of modern mathematics and mathematical physics.

The history of the mathematical publishing activity in Kharkov counts more than 100 years. The productivity and maturity of the Kharkov mathematical community since the middle of the last century has resulted in launching in 1880 the journal "Proceedings of the Kharkov Mathematical Society". The journal was one of the first mathematical journals in Russia. It provided sufficient publication support for mathematicians of the South-West part of Russia (before 1917) and the Soviet Union (after 1917), and was widely known.

The Proceedings were practically stopped in the middle sixties for reasons that have nothing to do with mathematics. This situation was partially improved in the late sixties when three mathematical publications were launched in Kharkov:
1.Function Theory, Functional Analysis and Their Applications (publisher Kharkov University);
2.The Ukrainian Geometric Proceedings (the same publisher);
3.Mathematical Physics and Functional Analysis (publisher the Institute for Low Temperature Physics).
Each of this publication had one (occasionally two) issues per year; launching a regular journal was impossible because of political and economical reasons. In 1991, the work in putting together three above-mentioned publications and converting them into a regular mathematical journal was begun. As the result, the journal (in Russian) - "Matematicheskaya Fizika, Analiz, Geometriya" (MAG) was launched in 1994. From July  2005 it was transformed into  Journal of Mathematical Physics, Analysis, Geometry.