Fon der Flaass, Dmitry Germanovich

Early years

D. G. Fon der Flaass was born in Krasnokamsk, Perm Territory on September 8, 1962 in the family of a doctor of geological and mineralogical sciences, Professor German Sergeevich Fon der Flaass. The family tree of Von der Flaass comes from an army officer of Napoleon, a Dutchman by birth, captured and left to live in Russia.

In 1975 , at the age of 13 (i.e. two years ahead of schedule), Fon der Flaass was enrolled in the PhMS at NSU . He took an active part in mathematics school olympiads, being a regular winner of the All-Union Olympiads , participated in the USSR schoolchildren team at the XIX International Mathematical Olympiad in Belgrade , where he received a bronze medal, ^[1] being 3-4 years younger than his rivals.

After leaving school, Fon der Flaass remained in Novosibirsk , where he studied, lived and worked almost his whole life. At the age of 15, he entered the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of NSU . He studied perfectly, during his studies he was a regular participant and winner of the Olympiads held as part of the All-Union conferences "Student and Scientific and Technical Progress." He specialized in the Department of Algebra and Mathematical Logic, where, under the scientific supervision of Professor VD Mazurov, he was engaged in the study of finite groups . On the same subject, he defended his diploma, entered graduate school at NSU and in 1986 (at the age of 23) he defended his thesis on maximal subgroups of finite simple groups . The results of the dissertation aroused great interest among specialists and were a significant contribution to the work on the classification of finite simple groups at that time. According to his supervisor, even when writing a Ph.D. thesis, the obvious tendency of Von der Flaass to beautiful and cunning combinatorial constructions was noticeable. ^[2]

Fon der Flaass taught for several years in the United States and Great Britain, but then returned to Russia, saying that the only place where he can feel comfortable is the Novosibirsk Academgorodok . ^[2]

Scientific work

Von der Flaass was professionally engaged in combinatorics as a researcher at the Institute of Mathematics of the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences . His main interests lay in the field of graph theory and coding theory . Over the 25 years of his work, he has published a considerable number of scientific papers, and over the past 10 years, his results were four times among the most important in the annual reports of the institute. ^[3] As a result, Von der Flaass became a world-renowned specialist in his field, although the versatility and versatility of his creative nature prevented him from completing his doctoral dissertation on the many results already published. Only under the many years of pressure from his superiors and with the technical support of his colleagues at the institute did he prepare his doctoral dissertation “The Algebraic Method in Combinatorial Problems” , which was brilliantly tested at all levels and even featured in the Higher Attestation Commission’s bulletin, but was ultimately not defended due to the dissertation reluctance spend a few more days on it. ^[four]

During his studies at the graduate school, Von der Flaass more than once demonstrated the ability to quickly and deeply understand almost any issue from various fields of mathematics. He was a walking encyclopedia on all issues of algebraic combinatorics and graph theory, had a sharp "olympiad" mind and the ability to read any mathematical article "diagonally." He paid considerable attention to the popularization of mathematics among mathematicians and students, repeatedly giving lectures on various topics that he read in a very lively manner.

Already being terminally ill, Fon der Flaass was still actively interested in science, having written three articles in the last three months and conceived another, searched for, solved and discussed olympiad problems, corresponded with colleagues, searched the Internet for old but important works on group theory, algebra, combinatorics, trying to comprehend the underlying philosophy embedded in them.

Dmitry Germanovich Fon der Flaass died of cancer of the esophagus on June 10, 2010.

In 2012, a collection of memoirs about D. G. Von der Flaass was published. ^[5] A posthumous publication of his doctoral dissertation is also planned. ^[2]

Along with successful professional work in “big mathematics”, activity in the field of mathematical olympiads for schoolchildren and students was a significant and integral part of the life of D. G. Von der Flaass. From the mid -1980s to 2009, with some omissions, von der Flaass was a member of the Central Subject Methodical Commission, the jury of the All-Union , and later the All-Russian Mathematics Olympiad , as well as the coaching council of the Russian schoolchildren team at the International Olympiad . For several years, he was also a coach of the combined schoolchildren of Great Britain, Kazakhstan and Yakutia, everywhere achieving significant success.

The pedagogical talents of Von der Flaass were manifested in the work with gifted children, and he did this work very qualitatively and vividly, without plunging into the usual routine. He presented mathematics to students as a set of beautiful and very general ideas embodied in a variety of ways, and then he taught to recognize and use all this without offering any ready-made recipes for solving problems.

In the All-Russian jury, his specialty, as in professional mathematics, was combinatorics. In verifying the solutions of combinatorial problems of a high level, complicated by the lack of support formulas and by shifting the emphasis to confusing reasoning, the special talent of Von der Flaass was most clearly manifested. Having received such a participant’s work in his hands, he always immersed himself in this fascinating reading with interest and attention, in order to either joyfully say: “Well done, look - see!” , Or silently indicate a “puncture” in the discussion. Good solutions to difficult problems, he was always happy, as his own, and often discussed them with colleagues. Often after his comments like: “Well, that’s understandable! We’ll rearrange these two fragments, we won’t read it, but here we will correct the two letters and that’s all! ” - the completely dark and unreadable text of the work acquired clarity and harmony. Von der Flaass was usually sent to the most difficult site of verification, and his judgment on a particular work was never questioned. It was a joy for any jury to hear that Von der Flaass would come to the Olympics. ^{[2] [4]}

Von der Flaass also participated in the work of the Methodological Commission for the compilation of problems for mathematical olympiads. Many of Von der Flaass's olympiad problems stemmed from or were related to his professional activity, but always these were very high-quality and interesting problems, as a rule, some of the most difficult ones at olympiads.

Bringing scientific results to a form that was understandable and accessible even to schoolchildren attracted Von der Flaass to the greatest extent. On this note, he completed his activity, having obtained a new scientific result ^[6] and having come up with a beautiful task that became the most difficult task of the 2010 All-Russian School Olympiad finals. ^{[7] [8]}

• P. Erdos, DG Fon-Der-Flaass, AV Kostochka, Zs. Tuza. Small transversals in uniform hypergraphs (neopr.) // Siberian Adv. Math .. - 1992. - T. 2 . - S. 82-88 .
• M. Alekseev, D. Barsky, A. Sparrow, G. Merzon, Yu. Prokopchuk, D. Von Der Der Flaass. About one task of sequential decoding // Materials of the XV International School-Seminar "Synthesis and complexity of control systems." - 2004. - S. 5-8 .
• D. G. Von der Flaass. Extending pairings to Hamiltonian cycles // Siberian Electronic Mathematical News. - 2010 .-- T. 7 . - S. 115-118 .
• D. G. Von der Flaass. Sophist Gorgias theorems and modern mathematics // Quantum . - 2010. - No. 5 .
• Publications by D. G. Von der Flaas on Mathnet.ru
• Olympiad problems of D. G. Von der Flaas at Problems.ru

• D. G. Von der Flaass 's LiveJournal blog
• M. Schoolboy. Left for Olympus // Navigator. - 06/18/2010. - number 23 .
• Photos from Dima Von Der Flaass from the home archive
• Alexandre Borovik, Dima Fon-Der-Flaass, a child of lost timemore
• The first user, Kronos D. G. Fon-Der-Flaass, shows the game “Labyrinth” he wrote to Marina Fon-der-Flaass (Filippova). The picture was taken by the correspondent of the magazine "Young Technician".