Dmitry Faddeev

Dmitrii Konstantinovich Faddeev (; 30 June 1907 – 20 October 1989) was a Soviet mathematician known for his work in algebra, number theory, homological algebra, computational mathematics, and mathematics education. He is also recognized for one of the earliest axiomatizations of Shannon entropy in probability theory.

Biography Faddeev was born on 30 June 1907 about 200 kilometres south-west of Moscow, on his father's estate. His father, Konstantin Tikhonovich Faddeev, was an engineer, and his mother was a physician with a deep interest in music that inspired Dmitrii's lifelong love of the piano. Friends later recalled his musical talent as both expressive and entertaining. and later played a role in information theory.

Together with Vera Faddeeva he wrote Numerical Methods in Linear Algebra (1960; enlarged edition 1963). For instance, they developed an idea of Urbain Leverrier to produce an algorithm to find the resolvent matrix of a given matrix A. By iteration, the method computed the adjugate matrix and characteristic polynomial for A. With I. S. Sominsky he co-authored Problems in Higher Algebra, which was translated into several languages.

Educational work Since the 1930s he organized and conducted school mathematical olympiads and built a strong pedagogical community in Leningrad. He was one of the founders of Boarding School No. 45 for Physics and Mathematics (now the D. K. Faddeev Academic Gymnasium of Saint Petersburg State University). From February 1965 he served as its scientific curator and later as a member of the school council.

Students Faddeev's students included Mark Bashmakov (ru), Zenon Borevich, Lyudmyla Nazarova, Andrei Roiter, Alexander Skopin, and Anatoly Yakovlev (ru).