Anton Kazimirovich Suschkewitsch (1889–1961)

Abstract

Anton Kazimirovich Suschkewitsch was a Russian mathematician who spent most of his working life at Kharkov State University in the Ukraine. In the 1920s, he embarked upon the first systematic study of semigroups, placing him at the very beginning of algebraic semigroup theory and, arguably, earning him the title of the world's first semigroup theorist. Owing to the political circumstances under which he lived, however, his work failed to find a wide audience during his lifetime. We give a brief account of his life and his researches into semigroup theory.

Acknowledgement

Thanks must go to Professors Yu I Lyubich, B V Novikov and B M Schein for providing me with information and references relating to Suschkewitsch. Particular thanks must go to Professor Lyubich for reading and commenting upon an earlier draft of this article.

Notes

¹ A list of Suschkewitsch's publications up to 1959 can be found in Gluskin and Lyapin (1959); a photograph of Suschkewitsch also accompanies this article.

² As was common at that time, Suschkewitsch used the term ‘operations’ for what we would now call ‘elements’; see, for example, Hofmann (1992, 47).