Established in 1997; scholars of the Department of Mathematics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine are awarded the Prize for outstanding scientific papers in the field of mathematics and mathematical problems of mechanics
Mykhaylo Vasyliovych Ostrogradsky Prize
Mykhaylo Vasyliovych Ostrogradsky – an outstanding mathematician, academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1830), full member of a number of other academies – was born on September 12, 1801. in the village of Pashenivka in the Poltava region. Since 1809 M.V. Ostrogradsky was studying at the Poltava Gymnasium, where at that time the supervisor was the famous Ukrainian writer, the author of “Aeneid” I.P. Kotlyarevsky, who was among those first who noticed the boy’s mathematical talent.
In the spring of 1816, M.V. Ostrogradsky arrived in Kharkiv and began to attend lectures at the department of physics and mathematics of Kharkiv University; first he was a free listener, but soon became a student.
M.V. Ostrogradsky demonstrated such exceptional abilities that he passed the exams for a three-year university course and received a certificate when he was barely 17 years old.
Soon, he decided to devote his life to mathematics, and went to Paris, where he attended lectures on mathematical disciplines at the Sorbonne and the College de France. Ostrogradsky quickly got himself noticed due to his extraordinary abilities.
In 1826 M.V. Ostrogradsky submitted his first scientific work “Memoirs on Wave Propagation in a Cylindrical Basin” to the French Academy of Sciences for its consideration.
In 1828 M.V. Ostrogradsky came to St. Petersburg, where his name was already known. During 33 years of scientific activity and until the end of his life, Ostrogradsky was closely related to the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences: in 1828 he was elected an adjunct, and two years later – an academician. Fame and recognition came to the scientist, later he became a corresponding member of the Paris Academy of Sciences, a full member of the Rome, Turin, and American Academies of Sciences.
The range of scientific activity of M.V. Ostrogradsky was extremely wide. The scholar was engaged in analytical mechanics, impact theory, ballistics, variational calculus, algebra, number theory, probability theory, etc.
The founder of the theory of hydrodynamics and aerodynamics M.E. Zhukovsky wrote that the academic papers on mechanics written by M.V. Ostrogradsky, encompassed almost all the problems on whose solution the thoughts of outstanding European mathematicians were focused at that time.
In 1830 M.V. Ostrogradsky outlined a grandiose program of his future research: creation of a theory of electricity and magnetism distribution, a theory of electrodynamic phenomena, movement of elastic bodies, the movement and equilibrium of a liquid, the action of capillarity, the distribution of heat in a liquid, and the calculation of probabilities.
Evidently, such a comprehensive program was beyond the possibilities of one person, but it gives us an idea of the power of the creative genius, M.V. Ostrogradsky, who was able to predict the course of the further development of science for many decades to come.