Pavel Korovkin
Russian mathematician (1913-1985)

Pavel Petrovich Korovkin (Russian: Павел Петрович Коровкин) (the family name is also transliterated as Korowkin in German sources) (9 July 1913 – 11 August 1985) was a Soviet mathematician whose main fields of research were orthogonal polynomials, approximation theory and potential theory. In 1947 he proved a generalization of Egorov's theorem: from the early 1950s on, his research interests turned to functional analysis and he examined the stability of the exterior Dirichlet problem and the convergence and approximation properties of linear positive operators on spaces of continuous functions. The set of terms and Korovkin approximation are named after him.
Life and career
Korovkin was born to a poor peasant family. He lost his father early and grew from 1914 to 1920 at an orphanage. In 1930 he graduated high school in Leningrad. As the winner of a mathematics contest he had a right to enter the Leningrad State University without entrance exams. After a year of working at a factory he entered the Faculty of Mathematics and Mechanics. His scientific advisor was V.I. Smirnov. Korovkin earned his doctorate in 1939 with a dissertation on orthogonal polynomials.
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