(1992). Funtion-theoretic methods for singular integral equations. Complex Variables, Theory and Application: An International Journal: Vol. 19, No. 1-2, pp. 11-13.

Il'in's name is linked with some first-rate achievements on the theory of boundary-value problems and mixed problems for equations of mathematical physics in domains with "bad" (non-smooth) boundaries and with discontinuous coefficients, the relation between classical and generalized solutions in problems of mathematical physics, spectral theory of self-adjoint elliptical operators and the theory of multiple series and Fourier integrals, mathematical modelling of problems on the diffraction and refraction of electromagnetic waves, the spectral theory of non-self-adjoint differential operators (including operators generated by non-local boundary conditions), and on difference methods for solving non-local boundary-value problems.

For outstanding services to the development of mathematical sciences and to the training of scientific personnel, and on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, Hero of Socialist Labour Academician Andrei Nikolaevich Tikhonov is awarded an Order of Lenin and a second gold medal "Hammer and Sickle". To mark the feats of labour of Hero of Socialist Labour Comrade A.N. Tikhonov a bronze bust is to be erected in the Hero's native land.

Academician Aleksandr Andreevich Samarskii, an outstanding mathematician specialist, in computational mathematics and mathematical physics, Hero of Socialist Work, celebrated his sixtieth birthday on 19 February 1979. He was born into a peasant family in the village of Novo-Ivanovskoe in the Donets-Amvrosievskii region of the Donets province. After leaving school he enrolled in the Faculty of Physics of the Moscow State University, and in 1939 he began to study under the supervision of A. N. Tikhonov. In 1941 he volunteered for the front, in December 1941 he was severely wounded and later demobilised. Not until 1944 was he able to continue his University studies. In 1948 he presented his Ph.D. thesis and in 1957 his D.Sc. thesis. He was elected a Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1966 and a Full Member in 1976. Let us give an account of some of his mathematical papers. He started to study the subject of his Ph.D. thesis in 1947/48 the perturbation of the discrete spectrum of the Laplace operator under a change of boundary. Ehrenfest, Witt, and Schubin had considered this problem between 1927 and 1931 in connection with some models of the atom and, as Samarskii's study showed, not all the statements they had made are valid. In Samarskii's formulation the problem is as follows. Let G be a domain in 2or 3-dimensional Euclidean space with a sufficiently smooth boundary Γ, let Ε C G, and let ϋε(Ε) be the open ε-neighbourhood of E. We consider two eigenvalue problems:

Zaid Ismailovich Khalilov, the distinguished Soviet Mathematician, Doctor of the Physical-Mathematical Sciences, Professor, Honoured Worker in Science and Technology, Member of the Academy of Sciences of the Azerbaijan SSR, died suddenly on 4 February 1974, in his 64th year. Khalilov was born on 14 January 1911 in Tbilisi, where he attended the secondary school and Pedagogical Technical College. In 1929 he went to the Department of Mathematics of the Azerbaijan State Pedagogical Institute in Baku, and, on graduation, became a lecturer at the Tbilisi Institute of Railway Engineers. Khalilov's scientific research work began in 1936, under the supervision of Professor Stefan Bergman, in the field of the theory of functions of many complex variables. In 1937 he became a research student at the Tbilisi Mathematical Institute, and began working under the supervision of Professor N. I. Muskhelishvili on the mathematical theory of elasticity; he investigated the stressed state of thick plates, using methods of the theory of functions of a complex variable. The results of these investigations served as the basis for his Ph.D. thesis "The Clebsch problem and its generalizations", which he defended successfully in 1940, at the Tbilisi State University. In 1940, Khalilov moved to Baku, where he became a lecturer at the S.M. Kirov Azerbaijan State University. At this time, mathematics was not at all represented in the Azerbaijan Branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and when, in January 1942, Khalilov was invited to work there, he became the first and only mathematician in the Physics Sector of the Azerbaijan Branch of the Academy of Sciences. Within three months he had created and was running a Section of Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, which at that time had only a few members, but which became the nucleus from which later the Institute of Mathematics

With its epoch-making discoveries the St. Petersburg Mathematics School has contributed many a page to the annals of the world history of mathematical thought. The names of three representatives of this school, Chebyshev, Lyapunov and Markov, are associated with the origins of three important branches of mathematics, namely approximation theory, the mathematical theory of stability, and the theory of Markov processes. A whole galaxy of great Soviet mathematicians have been brought up under the auspices of this glorious tradition. S.L. Sobolev by virtue of his fundamental research justly occupies a highly honoured place among them; he has laid the foundations of a number of new branches in modern mathematics. Sobolev was born on October 6, 1908 at St. Petersburg. His father Lev Aleksandrovich Sobolev was a well-known lawyer and barrister. His grandfather came from the Chitinsk province in Siberia. His father died when Sobolev was fourteen years old. His mother Nataliya Georgievna, brought up in the revolutionary traditions and a woman of good education, made great efforts towards the overall development of her son' s outstanding capabilities. In 1922, having completed his preparatory courses at the Khar' kov Workers' Evening Technical School, Sobolev entered the 190th School of Leningrad. (This had been the Lentovskii High School, which was founded during the First Russian Revolution by the foremost St. Petersburg teachers for pupils who had been excluded from the State Schools and Technical Colleges because of their participation in the revolutionary movement.) In 1925 he entered the Physics-Mathematics Faculty of the Leningrad State University. Sobolev' s brilliant talents had already been noticed during his student days by Smirnov and Gyunter who were then Professors at Leningrad University. At the time he finished at the University, Sobolev had already written an original paper on partial differential equations. In 1929 after completing his university training, he was employed in the Theoretical Department of the Seismological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, where he occupied in succession the posts of Scientific Worker, Scientific Specialist, Senior Specialist and Head of Department. In 1930 he gave a successful talk at the Khar'kov Ail-Union Mathematics Congress on " Wave equations in an inhomogeneous medium". While he was at the Seismological Institute Sobolev published a number of profound papers in which he put forward a new method for the solution of an important class of partial differential equations.

On November 19, 1960 one of the leaders of Soviet science reached the age of sixty, the distinguished mathematician Academician Mikhail Alekseevich Lavrent' ev. Always cheerful, energetic, full of bold ideas, restless; organizer and member of many expeditions to Kamchatka, the Kazakh steppe, Lake Issyk -Kul' and Dickson island such a man is Lavrent'ev, a vicepresident of the USSR Academy of Sciences and head of its Siberian section. His range of interests is exceptionally wide. He becomes excited by delicate points in the theory of functions and quasi-conformal mappings, and by new problems in the theory of differential equations, the theory of waves and gas dynamics. He investigates the mechanism of powerful explosions with the aim of using them for the complete re-organization of large earthworks, he assesses practical methods for the utilization of underground hot water, he considers how to contend with tsunami waves and how to ensure the safety of coal mines. He organizes a new scientific centre, one of the most important in the world, and his mind is occupied by the problems of higher education in this country and the organization of science.... M.A. Lavrent'ev was born in Kazan, his father Aleksei Lavrent'evich Lavrent'ev being a Professor of Mechanics. In 1922 Lavrent'ev graduated from the University of Kazan and entered Moscow University as a research student under N.N. Luzin. He was soon one of the most brilliant young members of the "Lusitania" the mathematical school which was in such luxuriant bloom at that time in Moscow. In this initial period of his mathematical activity he obtained a series of now classical results in descriptive set theory; for example, the theorem that a homeomorphism between two arbitrary sets can be extended to the minimal G 8 sets containing them, the theorems on the topological invariance of the В-, А-, САand other classes of sets and theorems concerning the division of classes into sub-classes. By this work [l]-[4], published in 1924-1925, he rapidly won recognition in the mathematical world both here and abroad.