Lev Shnirelman
Shnirel’man, Lev Genrikhovich
Born Jan. 2 (15), 1905, in Gomel’; died Sept. 24, 1938, in Moscow. Soviet mathematician. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1933).
Shnirel’man graduated from Moscow University in 1925. From 1934 to 1938 he was a staff member of the Steklov Institute of Mathematics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In a series of papers coauthored by L. A. Liusternik, Shnirel’man developed topological methods of the calculus of variations and, in particular, solved the problem of three geodesies. In number theory he proposed general metric methods and introduced the concept of density of sequence for the natural numbers. Shnirel’man was consequently able to prove that any number can be represented as the sum of a limited number of primes.