Samuil Osipovich Shatunovsky

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Samuil Shatunovsky attended lectures by Chebyshev in St Petersburg. He was a student at several technological and engineering insitutes in St Petersburg and taught at some of the institutes. However he could not enrol formally at the university since he had no school certificate.

Shatunovsky decided to try to obtain a university education in Switzerland and travelled to that country. However, his attempt to gain a higher education in Switzerland failed from lack of funds.

Returning to Russia Shatunovsky sent some of his mathematical work to Odessa University. The quality of the work was seen immediately and Shatunovsky began studies at Odessa. After obtaining a degree from Odessa he was appointed to the staff there in 1905. In 1917 he was promoted to the rank of professor at Odessa University and continued to work there for the rest of his life.

Shatunovsky's research was on several topics from analysis and algebra. In particular he produced good work in group theory, the theory of numbers and geometry.

He is perhaps best known, however, as one of the founders of the constructive approach to contemporary mathematics. Working on the foundations of mathematics, he produced an axiomatic theory independently of, but similar to, that of Hilbert. He used the axiomatic method to lay the logical foundations of geometry, algebraic fields, Galois theory and analysis.

Article by: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson

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JOC/EFR © December 1997 Copyright information	School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland
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