Naum Vilenkin - Biography

Naum Yakovlevich Vilenkin, Наум Яковлевич Виленкин, (October 30, 1920, Moscow — 1991, Moscow) was a Soviet mathematician, an expert in combinatorics. He is best known as the author of many books in recreational mathematics aimed at middle and high school students.

Biography

Vilenkin studied at the Moscow State University where he was a student of A.G. Kurosh. He received his habilitation in 1950; and was awarded the Ushinsky prize for his school mathematics textbooks in 1976.

Research

• Combinatorics by N.Ia. Vilenkin, A. Shenitzer, and S. Shenitzer (Hardcover - Sep 1971)
• Representation Theory and Noncommutative Harmonic Analysis II: Homogeneous Spaces, Representations and Special Functions (Encyclopaedia of Mathematical Sciences) by A.U. Klimyk, V.F. Molchanov, N.Ya. Vilenkin, and A.A. Kirillov (Hardcover - Aug 26, 2004)
• Representation of Lie Groups and Special Functions: Recent Advances (Mathematics and Its Applications) by N. Ja, Vilenkin and A. U. Klimyk (Hardcover - Nov 1, 1994)
• Representation of Lie Groups and Special Functions Volume 1: Simplest Lie Groups, Special Functions and Integral Transforms (Mathematics and its Applications) by N.Ia. Vilenkin and A.U. Klimyk (Hardcover - Nov 15, 1991)
• Generalized Functions. Volume 5. Integral geometry and representation theory by I. M Gel'fand, M.I. Graev, N.Ya. Vilenkin, and E. Saletan (Hardcover - Oct 25, 1966)
• Direct decompositions of topological groups, I, II (American Mathematical Society. Translation) by N.Ia. Vilenkin (1950)

Books in recreational mathematics

• In Search of Infinity by N.Ya. Vilenkin (Hardcover - 1995)
• Combinatorial mathematics for recreation by N. Ia Vilenkin (1972)
• Stories About Sets by N.Ia. Vilenkin (Paperback - 1968)
• Successive approximation, (Popular lectures in mathematics) by N.Ia¸ Vilenkin (1964)

• F.I. Karpelevich, A.U. Klimyk, L.M. Koganov, et al. "Naum Yakovlevich Vilenkin (on the occasion of his seventieth birthday)", Russian Math. Surveys 46 (1991), 251-254.