Lev Schnirelmann

Who was Lev Schnirelmann?

Lev Genrikhovich Schnirelmann was a Soviet mathematician who sought to prove Goldbach's conjecture. In 1930, using the Brun sieve, he proved that any natural number greater than 1 can be written as the sum of not more than C prime numbers, where C is an effectively computable constant.

His other fundamental work is joint with Lazar Lyusternik. Together, they developed the Lusternik–Schnirelmann category, as it is called now, based on the previous work by Henri Poincaré, David Birkhoff, and Marston Morse. The theory gives a global invariant of spaces, and has led to advances in differential geometry and topology.

Schnirelmann graduated from Moscow State University and then worked in Steklov Mathematical Institute. His advisor was Nikolai Luzin.

According to Pontryagin's memoir, Schnirelmann committed suicide in Moscow.