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The Scientific Legacy of Academician Iosif Izrailevich Vorovich On the 90th Anniversary of his Birth (from: Journal of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics 74 (2010) 629–632)
Iosif Izrailevich Vorovich would have celebrated his 90th birthday on 21 June 2010. A member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, he was a leading Russian scientist who achieved much in the fields of mechanics and mathematics. Vorovich was a remarkable teacher, and he founded an authoritative school of mechanics both at home and abroad. A detailed description of his life was published in Prikladnaya Matematika i Mekhanika (V.A. Babeshko, A.V. Belokon’, and V.I. Yudevich Iosif Izrailevich Vorovich. Prikl. Mat. Mekh., 2000;64(3)) and was given in a book of reminiscences about him (Reminiscences of Academician I.I. Vorovich. Rostov-on-Don: Rostov State Communications University: 2004).
Vorovich completed the fourth year at Moscow State University just before Germany invaded Russia in 1941, and then, during the war, graduated from the N.Ye. Zhukovskii Airforce Engineering Academy. He then served in the armed forces, continued his academic studies at the Academy and defended his Candidate Dissertation in 1950. His subsequent research and teaching were closely associated with Rostov State University, to which he was appointed in the same year. A young Candidate of Sciences, strong and energetic and bursting with creative thoughts and ideas, he immediately became a centre of attraction among Rostov mathematicians. Junior member of the teaching staff, senior lecturer, deputy professor, reader, Head of the Faculty of Elasticity Theory, professor, Director of the Scientific Research Institute of Mechanics and Applied Mathematics of Rostov State University, Honorary Soros Professor, corresponding member (1970) and full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1990) – these are the main landmarks in his many-sided research and teaching activity.
His brilliant defense of Doctoral Dissertation in 1950 was the forerunner to the setting up of the Faculty of Elasticity Theory at Rostov State University. In the very early stages of the establishment of the new faculty, at the beginning of the 1960 s, under his management, a number of the most central lines of research in mechanics took shape in a period of intense development of military technology: the non-linear theory of shells and problems of the stability of thin-walled structures, the non-linear theory of hydrodynamic stability, mixed static and dynamic problems of elasticity theory, the mathematical theory of thick plates and shells, and the mathematical theory of initial-boundary-value problems of viscoelasticity.
After a brilliant education as both a mathematician and an engineer, he employed all his potential to investigate the most diverse problems of mechanics and applied mathematics. In his research, he not only used state-of-the-art mathematics, functional analysis methods, and operator beam and non-linear operator equation theory but also created a new body of mathematics and was drawn to tackling any problems encountered by mathematicians. This principle of his scientific life, based on the rigorous mathematical formulation of problems and a comprehensive analysis, made it possible to achieve important results in the most difficult areas of the mechanics of deformable solids. Rigor of formulation, the use of new methods for investigating solvability and uniqueness, the wide use of asymptotic methods in the investigation of specific problems – these are the hallmarks of the researchers at the Rostov School of Mechanics.
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