Yuri Matiyasevich

Yuri Vladimirovich Matiyasevich (Russian: Ю́рий Влади́мирович Матиясе́вич; born 2 March 1947 in Leningrad) is a Russian mathematician and computer scientist. He is best known for his negative solution of Hilbert's tenth problem (Matiyasevich's theorem), which was presented in his 1972 doctoral thesis at LOMI (the Leningrad Department of the Steklov Institute of Mathematics). He continued to work at that institute, becoming a professor there in 1995. Matiyasevich was born in Leningrad on March 2, 1947. From 1962 to 1963 he studied at Leningrad physical and mathematical school No. 239. In 1964, he won a gold medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad and was enrolled in the Mathematics and Mechanics Department of St. Petersburg State University without exams. After graduation, he enrolled in graduate school at St. Petersburg Department of Steklov Mathematical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (POMI). In 1970, he defended his thesis for the degree of Candidate of Sciences in Physics and Mathematics. In 1972, at the age of 25, he defended his doctoral dissertation on the unsolvability of Hilbert's tenth problem. Using Fibonacci numbers, he managed to show that solutions to Diophantine equations may grow exponentially. Earlier work by Julia Robinson, Martin Davis and Hilary Putnam had shown that this suffices to prove that every computably enumerable set is Diophantine, a result which solves Hilbert's tenth problem and is now known as the MRDP theorem. From 1974 Matiyasevich worked in scientific positions at LOMI, first as a senior researcher, in 1980 he headed the Laboratory of Mathematical Logic. In 1995, Matiyasevich became a professor at POMI. In 1997, he was elected as a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Since 1998, Yuri Matiyasevich has been a vice-president of the St. Petersburg Mathematical Society. Since 2002, he has been a head of the St.Petersburg City Mathematical Olympiad. Since 2003, Matiyasevich has been a co-director of an annual German-Russian student school JASS. In 2008, he was elected as a full member of Russian Academy of Sciences. He was a member of the American Mathematical Society and the Association for Symbolic Logic; and also of the editorial boards for the journals Discrete Mathematics and Applications and Computer Instruments in Education.