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ISRAEL GELFAND, who died on October 5 aged 96, overcame the early handicap of being branded a class enemy in the Soviet Union to become one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century; his achievement was reflected in honours ranging from the Order of Lenin (awarded three times) to foreign membership of the Royal Society.
In a century when the discipline of mathematics became ever more specialised, Gelfand remained defiantly generalist and made contributions to nearly every branch of his subject. His studies on Banach algebras and infinite-dimensional representations of Lie groups are now standard in university textbooks.
His work in representation theory underpins quantum physics. His research on integrated geometry provided the maths which has enabled scientists to turn the raw data of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and "CAT" scans into three-dimensional images. When his son, Aleksandr, developed leukaemia in the 1950s, he even developed an interest in cell biology and neurophysiology and became a co-founder of the Institute of Biological Physics of the USSR Academy of Science.
Gelfand studied under the great Russian mathematician Andrei Kolmogorov. Comparing the two men, a colleague of Gelfand's observed that were they to find themselves in a mountainous country: "Kolmogorov would immediately try to climb the highest mountain. Gelfand would immediately start to build roads." Indeed, one of Gelfand's greatest contributions was to find new ways to inspire younger mathematicians, both in the Soviet Union and in the United States, whence he emigrated in 1990.
Undoubtedly his methods owed something to his dislike of Soviet totalitarianism. In a country where to express an unorthodox opinion could earn a spell in the gulags,...