Ivan Vinogradov

Ivan Vinogradov (1891-1983) began his studies in 1910 under A. A. Markov and Ya V Uspenski. This incited his curiosity in number theory. He used trigonometric series in attempts to solve deep problems in analytic number theory. He completed his master's degree in 1915 and worked on quadratic residues. He also generalized the results of Voronay on the "Dirichlet Divisor Problem." His studies of trigonometric series climaxed in his most celebrated work, Some theorems concerning the theory of prime numbers written in 1937 which provides a partial solution to the Goldbach Conjecture. In it he proved that "every sufficiently large odd integer can be expressed as the sum of three odd primes." He was able to combine his "bilinear form technique" and his "mean value theorem" to reduce the Goldbach Ternary Problem to checking a finite number of cases.

As a mathematician and number theorist, his contribution was for a wide variety of mathematical fields in that his methods could be utilized to solve a great range of problems. As a man he possessed a great vitality. One writer said of him, "Always a fit man, and proud of his physical fitness, he remained healthy and active into his early 90s."

Contributed by Jonathan Wolski