Èrnest Borisovich Vinberg

Abstract

The prominent mathematician Èrnest Borisovich Vinberg passed away on 12 May 2020. He was born in Moscow on 26 July 1937. His father Boris Georgievich Vinberg worked as an electrical engineer at the Dynamo plant of electrical equipment, and his mother Vera Evgen’evna Pokhval’nova was a teacher of mathematics and physics, and then worked as a calculation engineer. During the war the Vinberg family was evacuated to the Penza Oblast, and returned to Moscow in 1943. Vinberg became acquainted with mathematics and interested in it at a very young age. Already in high school, he made a firm decision to become a mathematician. In his sixth school year he started attending mathematics study groups at Moscow University on Mokhovaya street, participated successfully in mathematical olympiads and, in 1954, enrolled in the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics at Moscow State University. Evgeny Borisovich Dynkin was Vinberg’s scientific advisor during his years as an undergraduate student, as well as throughout his postgraduate studies, which began immediately upon Vinberg’s graduation from the University in 1959. For Vinberg this choice was extremely important, and the two mathematicians continued to maintain a close relationship until Dynkin’s death. Dynkin was not only an outstanding mathematician, but also an extremely original teacher. Undoubtedly, this had a strong influence on Vinberg’s development as a mathematician and a teacher. For him, scientific research and work with students were equally important. The main seminar attended by Vinberg was Dynkin’s seminar on Lie groups, which started in the 1956/57 academic year as a purely student-oriented seminar. However, F. A. Berezin and F. I. Karpelevich started frequenting the seminar already in the following year, and were joined by I. I. Piatetski-Shapiro a bit later. These were established brilliant young mathematicians, who participated in the previous version of Dynkin’s seminar in their student years. They willingly chatted with junior participants. In fact, Piatetski-Shapiro became Vinberg’s second supervisor. Among students, A. A. Kirillov and S. G. Gindikin, and also A. L. Onishchik (as a postgraduate student) were permanent participants of the seminar. By that