22 Facts About Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro

Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro was a Soviet-born Israeli mathematician.

Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro's father was from Berdichev, a small city in Ukraine, with a largely Jewish population.

Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro's mother was from Gomel, a similar small city in Belarus.

Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro became interested in mathematics at the age of 10, struck, as he wrote in his short memoir, "by the charm and unusual beauty of negative numbers", which his father, a PhD in chemical engineering, showed him.

In 1952, Piatetski-Shapiro won the Moscow Mathematical Society Prize for a Young Mathematician for work done while still an undergraduate at Moscow University.

Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro's winning paper contained a solution to the problem of the French analyst Raphael Salem on sets of uniqueness of trigonometric series.

Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro was ultimately admitted to the Moscow Pedagogical Institute, where he received his Ph.

Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro's contact with Shafarevich, who was a professor at the Steklov Institute, broadened Piatetski-Shapiro's mathematical outlook and directed his attention to modern number theory and algebraic geometry.

Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro conducted seminars for advanced students, among them Grigory Margulis and David Kazhdan.

Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro was invited to attend 1962 International Congress of Mathematicians in Stockholm, but was not allowed to go by Soviet authorities.

In 1966, Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro was again invited to the ICM in Moscow where he presented a 1-hour lecture on Automorphic Functions and arithmetic groups.

Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro was not allowed to travel abroad to attend meetings or visit colleagues except for one short trip to Hungary.

The anti-Jewish behavior in the Soviet Union was not enough to make Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro want to leave his country.

Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro lost his part-time position at mathematics department of Moscow State University in 1973, after he signed a letter asking Soviet authorities to release a dissident mathematician Alexander Esenin-Volpin from a mental institution.

Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro continued his researches nevertheless, and colleagues took books from the library for him.

Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro conducted his meetings with friends and colleagues by writing on a plastic board, especially when he needed to communicate about his situation.

Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro visited colleagues all over the world who had signed petitions and fought for his freedom before going to Israel.

Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro was welcomed warmly upon arrival in Israel and accepted a professorship at Tel Aviv University.

Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro was elected into Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 1978.

Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro battled Parkinson's disease for the last 30 years of his life.

Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro's condition worsened in the last 10 years to the point where he was barely able to move and speak, but thanks to the support of his wife Edith, he was still able to travel to mathematical conferences.

Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro was married three times and had a son, Gregory I Piatetsky-Shapiro and daughters, Vera Lipkin and Shelly Shapiro Baldwin.