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Alexei Zinovievich Petrov
Born in Volost village of Koshki, the Samara
guberniya, on October 28 (15, according to the Old Style),
1910, Alexei Zinovievich Petrov was the eleventh of twelve children
in a large family of the village pastor. He was sickly and of a
sedentary nature as a child. His father died of
tuberculosis when Alyosha
(the diminutive of Alexei) was only five years old. Shortly after this
event his own home caught fire and the house with all its contents was
completely destroyed. The disaster compelled his mother, Zoya
Nikolaevna, to
give over her two youngest sons, Alyosha and Sevir, the former
being a year older than the latter, to their paternal aunt, Ekaterina
Vasilievna Petrova a village teacher. It was she who adopted the boys
and gave them her surname.
In the village of Koshki, Alexei Zinovievich received elementary
education and then, in 1926, he finished a seven-year school education
in
the provincial town of Melex. He was very fond of reading and
read many books. But at school he did not study well and was
behind the class in mathematics. In fact his
mathematics teacher had to postpone the mathematics
examination until the autumn. This hurt the boy's pride and he
got down to work. For the whole summer he had been
studying hard and in autumn, when the teacher called on the
hapless pupil to answer at the blackboard, everybody in the
class expected nothing of him but another failure. He not only
managed to solve the mathematical problem put to him with lighting
speed but also coped perfectly with all the other tasks that the
astonished teacher offered to him. This episode hinted clearly at
the mathematical future of Alexei Zinovievich and his main traits
and character- strong will, propensity to work hard and a remarkable
persistence in gaining his ends.
After finishing the school Alexei entered the pedagogical
college of Melex. However, after one year he had to leave and find
employment due to the retirement of his foster-mother and the consequent
financial hardship this implied. He worked
in Saratov as a carpenter. In 1931 he, together with his brother
Sevir, found work in Kazan in the building of a thermal electric power
station.
The brothers' lives were hard
but still Alexei studied avidly, stubbornly and hard.
He was preparing himself for the entrance examinations to the
University. Once when he was searching for books at a
bookstall Alexei came across a university textbook on higher
mathematics and began to read it. This finally decided his fate.
The choice was made and in 1932 he passed the external
secondary school final examination and entered the department of
physics
and mathematics at the University of Kazan. That was the time
of the first of the five-year plans , the time of great aims and high
hopes and everyone's enthusiasm.
Together with the young Soviet Union
the University of Kazan was at the height of the remarkable
uplift. On returning from Gottingen, Professor N.G. Chataev,
full of plans and youthful enthusiasm, set to work on his famous
"Kazan program" and which he successfully carried out afterwards.
N.G. Chebotarev, a corresponding member of The Academy of
Sciences of the USSR, who had moved to Kazan shortly before,
united the talented youth round himself
to found an algebra
school in Kazan. Profound investigations carried on in the
theory of Riemann and generalized spaces by Professor P.A.
Shirokov once again put the University of Kazan in the
foreground in the development of non-Euclidian
geometry.
These people, who had a common desire in their hearts to serve
the cause of science, an exalted
understanding of its meaning, and strong
moral principles, became mentors for Alexei Petrov. He had
been true to his ideals all his life.
The first-year students of the department of physics and
mathematics at once took notice of this clever student A.Z. Petrov
who had a reputation for being able "to solve any problem
straight off" and for being "very good at mathematics" . "And
how he studied !"- recalls his fellow-mate, Assistant Professor
V.G.Kopp, who was in the same year as Petrov. "You
would often drop in to see him while he was working and try to
talk to him but Alexei answered all the questions with an inaudible
mumble, characteristic of him at work. If you heard such a
mumble you ought to leave---it was impossible to tear him away
from his work.
The gifted and persistent student drew the attention of
Professor P.A. Shirokov. His working under Professor P.A.
Shirokov determined in many respects the fate of A.Z. Petrov in
science. At that time P.A. Shirokov was one of the most
prominent and erudite soviet geometers. He was intimately
acquainted not only with N.I. Lobachevsky's ideas about
the influence of matter upon the properties of space (and which became
a forerunner of the gravitation theory by A. Einstein) but also with
the applications of Lobachevskian geometry and its generalization
to theoretical physics. At the time when Einstein's
theory was in its infancy and many physicists
considered it as being hard to understand due to the complexity of
the mathematical techniques used and to its esoteric nature
P.A. Shirokov foresaw the enormous potential of the theory and
the new challenge and opportunities it posed to his research
students. The theme he offered to Petrov
would become afterwards the theme of Petrov doctor's thesis
and its name would become the title of Petrov's classic monograph
"Einstein spaces".
After graduating from the University A.Z.. Petrov worked
as a teacher in many Kazan institutes and at the same time did
his PhD work under Professor P.A. Shirokov, working hard
day and night. Sometimes he existed on just a piece of bread
and a glass of water.
His studies were interrupted by the war. In December,
1941, in a bitter forty-degree frost, Alexei Zinovievich was sent to
the front at Moscow to command a mortar detachment. As a result he did
not have the
time to defend his dissertation.
The defence of his dissertation successfully passed off in
January, 1943 when battery commander A.Z. Petrov received
a short leave of absence for it. But in August that year he was badly
wounded and returned home as a disabled soldier of the Great
Patriotic War and was placed in the second highest group of
disablement. He became ill and irritable. The disability status
would be cancelled far later and after a long treatment. After his
demobilization Alexei Zinovievich worked as an Assistant
Professor in the Kazan Aviation Institute where in 1945 he joined
the Communist Party. He was very proud of it , writing
enthusiastic letters to his brothers about this event, and having high
regard for the title of communist. He was loyal to it all his
life. Later that year he transferred to the Geometry section of the
University.
By that time Alexei Zinovievich had already
married and had a little son Alyosha. The family had
to leave their comfortable institute flat and move to a room
without modern conveniences in a university hostel. Work in
the University promised a vast opportunity for pursuing science
and material comforts were of little importance to Alexei
Zinovievich. He never valued them. Early in the post-war years
Petrov completely formed his scientific predilections:
the application of mathematical methods (geometry, group theory,
algebra) to physical field theory.
In 1946 he began research
in the theory of Einstein spaces and in 1952-54 proved a
remarkable theorem that afterwards brought him world fame.
The theorem stated the existence of three types of Einstein spaces
(called Petrov types in the present world literature). This "Petrov
Clasification" as it is now known has proved immensely useful in the
description and finding of exact solutions of Einstein's
field equations and in the study of gravitational radiation.
Thus, it became possible to shed light on one of the most
complex and intricate questions of the general theory of
relativity. The classification of Einstein spaces according to the
three types became the basis of Petrov's doctoral thesis and was
defended with huge success in 1957 in the State University of
Moscow (MSU). In Moscow he had been working very hard as usual,
never sparing himself, and upon returning to Kazan after the
completion of his doctoral research, he headed the University
selection committee. But the overwrought heart could not put
up with the new anxiety. With the diagnosis of myocardium
infarct Alexei Zinovievich was placed in the old hospital just
opposite the University, under the observation of Professor Z.I.
Malkin. Hardly was the first danger past when he demanded
that he should be discharged from the hospital. His appeal was
refused. Then he persuaded his wife to bring him pen and
paper and began to work in the hospital. The doctors were
indignant about it and threatened him with heavy consequences but
were unable to overcome his stubbornness. This was all to
recur in five years time and again, despite all prohibitions and
persuasions, he stubbornly carried out research, met with
and consulted post-graduate students and insisted on his early
discharge from hospital to his home where his research would
not be impeded. This attitude of A.Z. (as his friends referred to him)
to his disease was not bravado or levity of mind - to him, the
disease was nothing more than a disappointing obstacle
which he had to get rid of as soon as possible.
In October, 1956 A.Z. Petrov became Professor at the
Geometry Chair of the University of Kazan and in 1960 he
headed the Chair of Relativity Theory and Gravitation which he helped
to found
at the University of Kazan (and which was the first
and up to now the only one in the Soviet Union). Without
interrupting his scientific investigations at that time,
Petrov expended much effort on organizational and methodical
work. He was a brilliant lecturer. With immense energy and an
outstanding ability to work hard he
delivered a large number of special courses on gravitation,
relativity theory and related disciplines (and even now the Chair
remains unique for the number and variety of special courses
read at it).He devoted much time to work with students, post-
graduates and Chair's assistants, headed several regular
seminars and was an editor of the periodic collection of works
"Gravitation and the Relativity Theory" published by the
University of Kazan. For a short time he managed to bring up a
whole pleiad of talented followers, created a scientific school
that became famous far outside Kazan.
In 1960 Alexei Zinovievich Petrov was elected
chairman of the section in the scientific council of the USSR
devoted to gravitational investigations and chairman of the
Soviet commission in the International committee for
gravitation and the relativity theory. Petrov occupied these
posts till the end of his life and played a significant role in the
organization and development of investigations in the field of
gravitation in the Soviet Union and abroad.
In the 1960s two monographs by A.Z. Petrov "Einstein
spaces" and "New methods in the general theory of relativity"
were published, summing up the results of his investigations for many
years. These monographs occupy a special place in
the world literature on the general theory of relativity
and were translated into foreign
languages. Alexei Zinivievich also showed keen interest in
questions concerning the experimental confirmation of the general
theory of relativity. For that purpose he organized an
experimental laboratory at the Chair of the theory of relativity
and gravitation and later, during his work in the Institute of
Theoretical Physics of Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, he led
together with Professor V.B.Braginsky (MSU) a series of
experiments on the experimental observation of gravitational
radiation. He was an active popularizer of the relativity theory,
and his brochure "Space, time and matter" written in 1961 is
characterized by a clear style easily understandable by the ordinary
reader. This brochure ran into several editions and was
translated into Japanese. Meanwhile, A.Z.Petrov had been
working as hard as ever, not less than twenty hours a day. As a
rule he worked at a coffee table, sitting in a settee in his study -
a large room, one corner of which had been cut off, with
portraits of A. Shirokov and A. Einstein on the wall and the
windows looking out on to the busy junction of Kirov and Cheneshevsky
Streets.
He managed to find
time somehow to read and would sometimes surprise you with a
thorough familiarity OF the works of some little-known poet or
writer. He was interesting to talk to if occasionally his manners were
a little
on the sarcastic side and witty. He spoke little and slowly,
subduing the listeners with sparing, imperious, exact words. He
wrote in a similar way omitting the unnecessary and getting to the
point
quickly. His
vivacious, keen phrases devoid of stereotypes were easily retained in
the memory. He demanded the same of his students, derisively
correcting the "vile jargon" of their first articles.
On December, 26, 1969 A.Z. Petrov was elected an
academician of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (UAS) and in
July 1970 he became Head of the department of relativity
theory and gravitation in the Institute of Theoretical Physics of
UAS. At the time of his departure to Kiev his final illness had begun
In Kiev although he had been ill for a long time, he
continued to work in hospital. Every day, according to a
special schedule, he met in his ward with post-graduate
students and department's workers and directed and consulted them.
In April 1972 A.Z.Petrov was awarded The Lenin award for
the series of works "invariant group methods for investigations
in the relativity theory" On May, 9 that year he died in the
hospital following an operation when a blood clot came into his heart.
(the blood clot came into his heart after the operation, they did not
remove it as in your sentence)
Not long before his death, late in the year 1971, Alexei
Zinovievich came to Kazan. He was taciturn and estranged, as if he
had been secluded from the rest of the world by an invisible
wall. During his conversation with V.G. Kopp he said "I live
now in a beautiful room looking onto a garden. There is silence
all around. That's the place where it is so wonderful to work
in". These words reveal completely A.Z. Petrov's character as a
man whose aspiration to knowledge was irrepressible and
graceful like a flying arrow, sent from a tautly drawn bow,
precisely hitting the target.
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