Boris Levitan, Renowened Mathematician
Bill Schenley
http://www.startribune.com/stories/466/4716721.html
, 89, a world-renowned and winner of the former Soviet
Union's highest civilian honor, the Lenin Prize, died April
4 after suffering a stroke at his home in Minneapolis. He
was buried Friday in Adath Chesed Shel Emes cemetery in New
Hope.
Levitan came to the United States in 1992, after many years
of teaching and research at Moscow State University,
Russia's highest degree-granting institution. He became an
adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota at age 77
and stayed active until about five years ago, when
Parkinson's disease made him unable to work. His stepson,
Leonid Glazman, is a physics professor at the University of
Minnesota.
"Professor Levitan was an absolutely outstanding person,"
said Grigory Barenblatt, a mathematics professor at the
University of California at Berkeley. "He was my first
mentor."
Levitan and Vladimir Marchenko were awarded the Lenin Prize
in 1961 for "a great work, the inverse scattering problem,"
Barenblatt said, adding that it is too complicated to
explain, but was "very important in various aspects of
physics for the next 50 years."
Levitan was born in Berdyansk, in southern Ukraine, and
became a doctor of science -- a level above an American
Ph.D. -- at age 26, "which was absolutely unusual,"
Barenblatt said. "Simultaneously, he received the title of
full professor."
Levitan's wife, Polina Naiman, also a mathematician, said
earning that level of doctorate usually wasn't achieved
before the age of 40.
Barenblatt said Levitan was "absolutely charming ... he was
loved by everybody and had modesty without limits." That
modesty almost got him killed. When Germany invaded the
Soviet Union in June 1941, Levitan "was summoned to the
military commissariat to be drafted," Barenblatt said. "He
was asked if he had the title of associate professor. He was
so modest he did not say, " 'No, I have the title of full
professor.' " His modesty was so great that Naiman only
learned of this in a letter from Barenblatt, who heard the
story told in Moscow during a 70th birthday celebration for
Levitan.
As a junior officer, he nearly was shot in a strafing attack
so close that he could see the pilot's face. He fought in
the Battle of Stalingrad and was removed from combat in 1944
to teach at an artillery academy in Samarkand.
After the war, the academy moved to Moscow, but for a Jew to
become a professor at the university, "it was almost
impossible," Naiman said. Restrictions loosened after
Stalin's death, and Levitan was taken onto the faculty in
1961, while still working at the artillery academy part
time. "Every, every evening and every free minute was
research, research, research," she said. "His life was
mathematics."
Winning a Lenin Prize in a nation with official and
unofficial anti-Semitism also was remarkable, Barenblatt
said. But he was among other Jewish recipients whose "work
was so strong and important," that giving them the prize
"could not be avoided."
Levitan's first wife died in 1980, and he and Naiman,
widowed in 1968, married in 1983.
For about 30 years, Levitan was host of professional
seminars on Wednesday and Thursday nights that drew people
from across the Soviet Union to talk, make presentations
"and see what Levitan will say," Naiman said. He wrote many
books, some translated into English. His last was "Inverse
Problem of Spectral Analysis of Differential Operators."
In addition to Naiman and Glazman, Levitan is survived by a
son, Michael of Moscow; a daughter, Janna of Toronto; a
stepdaughter, Eva, of Marsailles, France, and four
grandchildren.
"How lucky I am that I ... not only knew him but had him as
my first teacher." Barenblatt said. In America, "I did my
best to explain to people that a giant was living among
them." But Levitan "didn't have 'sharp elbows.' He didn't
shout to everybody, 'I am Levitan!' "