Olga Oleinik
Russian mathematician of Ukrainian origin (1925–2001)
Olga Arsenievna Oleinik (also as Oleĭnik) HFRSE (Russian: О́льга Арсе́ньевна Оле́йник) (2 July 1925 – 13 October 2001) was a Soviet mathematician who conducted pioneering work on the theory of partial differential equations, the theory of strongly inhomogeneous elastic media, and the mathematical theory of boundary layers. She was a student of Ivan Petrovsky. She studied and worked at the Moscow State University.
She received many prizes for her remarkable contributions: the Chebotarev Prize in 1952; the State Prize 1988; the Petrowsky Prize in 1995; and the Prize of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1995. Also she was member of several foreign academies of sciences, and earned several honorary degrees.
Life
On 2 May 1985 Olga Oleinik was awarded the laurea honoris causa by the Sapienza University of Rome, jointly with Fritz John.
Work
Research activity
She authored more than 370 mathematical publications and 8 monographs, as the sole author or in collaboration with others: her work covers algebraic geometry, the theory of partial differential equations where her work enlightened various aspects, elasticity theory and boundary layers theory.
Teaching activity
She was a very active teacher, advising the thesis of 57 "candidates".
Selected publications of Olga Oleinik
Oleinik, Olga A. (1957), "Discontinuous solutions of non-linear differential equations", Uspekhi Matematicheskikh Nauk (in Russian), 12 (3(75)): 3–73, MR 0094541, Zbl 0080.07701. An important paper where the author describes generalized solutions of nonlinear partial differential equations as BV functions.
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