Vladimir Gerdt dies at 73

Abstract

It is our deepest regret to inform you that Vladimir Petrovich Gerdt, Professor, Head of the Algebraic and Quantum Computing Group of the Scientific Department of Computational Physics of the Laboratory of Information Technologies (LIT) at the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Oblast Moscow, Russia, died on January 5th, 2021 at the age of 73, following complications caused by COVID-19. Vladimir Gerdt was born on January 21, 1947 in the town of Engels, Saratov region of the USSR. He began his scientific activity at JINR in November 1971, after graduating from the Physics Department of Saratov State University, first in the Department of Radiation Safety, and from February 1977 on in the Laboratory of Computer Technology and Automation, which was renamed in the year 2000 to Laboratory of Information Technologies, where he was engaged in the deployment of analytical computing software systems on the computers of the JINR Central Research Center, their development and application for solving physical problems. Starting in 1983, he was the head of the Computer Algebra Research Group (renamed in 2007 to Algebraic and Quantum Computing Group) at LIT. In 1976, Vladimir Gerdt successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis (for Kandidat nauk/Kandidat nauk) in the field Theoretical and Mathematical Physics, and in 1992, his doctoral dissertation (for Doktor nauk/Doktor nauk, D.Sc.) in the field Application of Computer Technology, Mathematical Modeling, and Mathematical Methods for Scientific Research. In 1997, he was awarded the academic title of Professor. Vladimir Gerdt started his career with work on the integrability analysis of nonlinear evolution equations using symmetries, and he never ceased to be interested in symmetry methods for di↵erential equations. Later, the involution analysis of polynomial systems and systems of di↵erential or di↵erence equations became a core theme in his research. Together with some of his students, he developed the theory of involutive bases out of the Janet–Riquier theory. As one application of these results to physics, he was always interested in the study of systems with constraints, in particular in Dirac theory. Another application in recent years consisted of designing structure preserving numerical methods for partial di↵erential equations. In the last years, he also revived the Thomas decomposition for polynomial di↵erential equations and applied it to numerous problems. One of his last significant results was an algorithmic solution of the linearization problem for ordinary di↵erential equations. For many years, Vladimir Gerdt also worked in the field of quantum computing. His group at JINR developed methods and computer algebra programs for studying quantum information processes and for modeling quantum systems. In particular, they applied a combination of computational invariant theory and involutive bases to a qualitative and quantitative study of entangled quantum states. Vladimir Gerdt was the author or co-author of more than 240 scientific papers (a listing is available at his CV at JINR), and he was a leading expert in the field of symbolic and algebraic computation. He devoted a lot of e↵ort and energy to train young researchers in these modern scientific areas. He was a professor at the Department of Distributed Information Computing Systems of Dubna State University, where, under his supervision, seven PhD theses were defended.