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Biography
Yuri Vladimirovich Linnik (Russian: Ю́рий Влади́мирович Ли́нник; January 8, 1915 – June 30, 1972) was a Soviet mathematician active in number theory, probability theory and mathematical statistics.
Linnik was born in Bila Tserkva, in present-day Ukraine. He went to St Petersburg University where his supervisor was Vladimir Tartakovski, and later worked at that university and the Steklov Institute. He was a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, as was his father, Vladimir Pavlovich Linnik. He was awarded both State and Lenin Prizes. He died in Leningrad.
Work in number theory
- Linnik's theorem in analytic number theory
- The dispersion method (which allowed him to solve the Titchmarsh problem).
- The large sieve (which turned out to be extremely influential).
- An elementary proof of the Hilbert-Waring theorem; see also Schnirelmann density.
- The Linnik ergodic method, see Linnik (1968), which allowed him to study the distribution properties of the representations of integers by integral ternary quadratic forms.
Work in probability theory and statistics
Infinitely divisible distributions
Linnik obtained numerous results concerning infinitely divisible distributions. In particular, he proved the following generalisation of Cramér's theorem: any divisor of a convolution of Gaussian and Poisson random variables is also a convolution of Gaussian and Poisson.
He has also coauthored the book Linnik & Ostrovskii (1977) on the arithmetics of infinitely divisible distributions.
Central limit theorem
- Linnik zones (zones of asymptotic normality)
- Information-theoretic proof of the central limit theorem
Statistics
- Behrens–Fisher problem