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Vladimir Aleksandrovich Il'in (on his 80th birthday)

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2008 Russ. Math. Surv. 63 1163

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Russian Math. Surveys 63:6 1163–1172 ⃝
c 2008 RAS(DoM) and LMS
Uspekhi Mat. Nauk 63:6 173–182 DOI 10.1070/RM2008v063n06ABEH004588

MATHEMATICAL LIFE

Vladimir Aleksandrovich Il’in

(on his 80th birthday)

On 2 May 2008 Vladimir Aleksandrovich

Il’in, full member of the Russian Academy of
Sciences, observed his 80th birthday.
Il’in is known for his outstanding achieve-
ments in the theory of boundary-value and
mixed problems for equations of mathemati-
cal physics considered in domains with ‘bad’
(non-smooth) boundaries and having discontin-
uous coefficients, in the question of the connec-
tion between classical and generalized solutions
of problems in mathematical physics, in mathe-
matical modelling of problems involving diffrac-
tion of electromagnetic waves on non-smooth
surfaces, in the spectral theory of selfadjoint
elliptic operators, in the theory of multiple
Fourier series and integrals, in the spectral the-
ory of non-selfadjoint differential operators, in
the spectral theory of Schrödinger operators
with strongly singular potential, and in the theory of optimization of boundary
controls of oscillatory processes.
He was born on 2 May 1928 in the ancient Russian town of Kozelsk, where he
lived in his grandfather’s house with a huge garden on a street on the outskirts of
town known as Maloe Zarech’e (Little Riverside). The grandfather in whose house
he lived was a painter of icons, and the other grandfather, and grandmother, came
from very successful merchant families. In 1931 Il’in’s father Aleksandr Sergeevich,
a mathematics teacher, and mother Elizaveta Ivanovna, a student at the Pedagog-
ical Institute (known then as ‘the second Moscow State University’) moved with
their three-year-old son to Moscow. From this time on the boy was always with his
favourite grandmother Anna Konstantinovna, who undoubtedly played an impor-
tant role in the development of his personality. She taught the four-year-old Volodya
to read and write, and to love poetry and try to write his own poems. At five years
of age he knew the multiplication table and the squares of all the natural numbers
up to 20. At the same time he was engrossed in geography, knew all the large
cities of the world, and could draw accurate maps of countries and continents. He
AMS 2000 Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary 01A70.
1164 Vladimir Aleksandrovich Il’in

liked listening to classical music, which he easily remembered, on the newly started
Moscow radio broadcasts.
School education began at 8 years of age then, but after only two weeks in the
first form the school suggested that Volodya be transferred to the second form.
He received excellent marks in every form, seemingly with hardly any effort — he
learned very quickly and had an outstanding memory.
As for all those of his generation, the crucial event for the teenage Volodya was
the war with Germany. His first shock was learning that Paris had been declared
an open city. Then there came the year 1941, his father’s departure to the front,
and evacuation together with the school where his mother taught physics, first to
Ryazan’ Province, then on to Perm’ Province (Molotov Province at the time). Life
was hard for everyone, but evacuated people were treated with kindness, and the
quality of teaching in rural schools was good.
After returning from the evacuation, Volodya Il’in in his high school years was
an active participant of the extracurricular mathematics group of the Faculty of
Mechanics and Mathematics at Moscow State University (MSU), supervised by the
then young A. S. Kronrod and S. B. Stechkin, and he won in mathematics olympiads
(a letter of commendation to the 10th-grade winner V. A. Il’in has survived, signed
by the Chairman of the Olympiad Organizing Committee I. M. Gel’fand, the Pres-
ident of the Moscow Mathematical Society P. S. Aleksandrov, and the Dean of the
Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of MSU V. V. Golubev).
In 1945 Il’in graduated with a gold medal from secondary school no. 273. On
the advice of his father, who knew the prominent mathematician A. N. Tikhonov
teaching in the Faculty of Physics at MSU, he enrolled in that faculty and, at a time
when students were attached to departments, became a student of Tikhonov.
In 1950 Il’in graduated with distinction from the Faculty of Physics (having
never received a mark below ‘excellent’) and was recommended by Tikhonov for
graduate study in mathematical physics. In 1953 Il’in defended his Ph.D. thesis
“Diffraction of electromagnetic waves on certain inhomogeneities” and began work-
ing as an assistant in the Department of Mathematics headed by Tikhonov in the
Faculty of Physics. In February 1958 Il’in defended his D.Sc. thesis “On conver-
gence of expansions in eigenfunctions of the Laplace operator” and a year later was
appointed to a professorship at MSU.
In 1970 he transferred, at Tikhonov’s suggestion, to the newly formed MSU
Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics. Since July 1974 he has
headed the Department of General Mathematics that he formed within that faculty.
Thus, Il’in’s 55 years of research and teaching are inseparably linked to MSU.
In parallel with this, Il’in has worked productively since 1973 at the Steklov
Mathematical Institute, first as a senior researcher in the Department of Partial
Differential Equations and presently as chief researcher in the Department of Func-
tion Theory. In his 35 years of work at the Steklov Institute his results have been
declared the best work within the Division of Mathematical Sciences eight times,
and twice the best work within the whole Academy of Sciences.
In 1987 Il’in was elected a corresponding member and in 1990 a full member of
the USSR Academy of Sciences.
 Vladimir Aleksandrovich Il’in 1165

His first original results, obtained already during his student years on a topic
suggested by Tikhonov, were established in the problem of convergence of bilinear
series in a cylindrical domain G, where the terms of the series had numerators con-
taining products of eigenfunctions of the Laplace operator in G evaluated at two
generally distinct points P and Q and denominators containing the corresponding
eigenvalues raised to an arbitrary positive power. In this area he obtained a num-
ber of exhaustive results published as two papers in Doklady Akademii Nauk and
presented at a session of the Moscow Mathematical Society. Among other results,
he refuted a statement in the well-known book Methods of Mathematical Physics
by R. Courant and D. Hilbert which asserted that the bilinear series representing
the Green’s function for the Laplace operator in a rectangular domain G is abso-
lutely convergent everywhere for P ̸= Q. He proved that this bilinear series does
not converge absolutely for any pair of interior points P and Q of the rectangular
domain G.
The research he carried out in his graduate-student years dealt with mathe-
matical models for solving the problem of diffraction of electromagnetic waves
on well-conducting cylindrical surfaces with sharp edges, the problem of coast-
line refraction of radio waves, and the problem of excitation of non-ideal radio
waveguides with sharp edges. These topics were chosen for his Ph.D. thesis.
Three and a half years after defending his Ph.D. thesis, Il’in submitted to the
Dissertation Council of the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics his D.Sc. thesis
on a purely mathematical topic. In it he included his recently obtained results on
exact conditions for absolute and uniform convergence of eigenfunction expansions
for the first three boundary-value problems (essentially refining the conditions
obtained four years earlier by O. A. Ladyzhenskaya), his results generalizing the
concept of a sourcewise representable function and the Hilbert–Schmidt theorem,
his results on fractional powers of the integral operator whose kernel is the Green’s
function of the boundary-value problem under consideration, and his exhaustive
results on definitive conditions in the Sobolev classes Wpl with integer order l for
uniform convergence of eigenfunction expansions for the first three boundary-value
problems in the case of summation in the order of increasing eigenvalues.
He published the most important of these results in an article for Uspekhi Matem-
aticheskikh Nauk of almost a hundred pages and in a paper “Kernels of fractional
order”. As commented by M. A. Krasnosel’skii, these results were, among other
things, an excellent tool for obtaining many embedding theorems.
To begin a review of subsequent scientific achievements of Il’in, we should note
the appraisal of his results by his teacher Tikhonov: “The characteristic feature
of the entire creative contribution of V. A. Il’in is the profoundness and the clarity in
the formulations of the problems and the exhaustive nature of the results obtained.”
Furthermore, the above list of areas in which Il’in conducted investigations
demonstrates the exceptional breadth and diversity of his scientific interests. For
instance, several years ago his attention was attracted by problems completely new
to him. He studied them with great enthusiasm and achieved very significant and
impressive results. We shall describe this topic at greater length and then more
briefly treat the whole spectrum of his interests.
1166 Vladimir Aleksandrovich Il’in

In 1999 he began to study boundary control problems for processes described by

hyperbolic equations, first and foremost the wave equation

utt (x, t) − uxx (x, t) = 0,

considered on an interval 0 6 x 6 l and over a time interval 0 6 t 6 T .

In his first papers on the subject he introduced on the rectangle QT =
[0 6 x 6 l] × [0 6 t 6 T ] a class of functions that was to play a decisive role
in the subsequent investigation, namely, the class W c 1 (QT ) of functions u(x, t)
2
of two variables that are continuous in the closed rectangle QT and have in it
both generalized partial derivatives ux (x, t) and ut (x, t) belonging not only to the
class L2 (QT ) but also to the class L2 [0 6 x 6 l] for all t ∈ [0, T ] and to the class
L2 [0 6 t 6 T ] for all x ∈ [0, l].
All boundary control problems are treated in terms of generalized solutions in
c 1 (QT ) of the mixed problem for the wave equation with given initial conditions
W 2

u(x, 0) = φ(x), ut (x, 0) = ψ(x)

and with boundary conditions at x = 0 and x = l ensuring that specified terminal

conditions
u(x, T ) = φ(x),
b ut (x, T ) = ψ(x)
b

are satisfied at the terminal moment of time t = T .

The condition that the solutions u(x, t) belong to the class W c 1 (QT ) allows one
2
to describe exactly the smoothness requirements imposed on the functions in the
initial, terminal, and boundary conditions.
For T such that T 6 l, Il’in first found necessary and sufficient conditions on the
initial functions φ(x) and ψ(x) and the terminal functions φ(x)
b and ψ(x)
b guarantee-
ing the existence of boundary controls of the endpoint displacements u(0, t) = µ(t)
and u(l, t) = ν(t) which transform the oscillation process from the prescribed
initial state {u(x, 0) = φ(x), ut (x, 0) = ψ(x)} to the prescribed terminal state
{u(x, T ) = φ(x),
b ut (x, T ) = ψ(x)},
b and under those conditions he produced the
desired boundary controls in explicit analytic form. He obtained a similar result
for the boundary control of the displacement at one endpoint with the second end-
point fixed for T such that T 6 2l.
Boundary control problems have infinitely many solutions when T > l in the
case of controls at both endpoints and when T > 2l in the case of a control at
one endpoint (a non-trivial characterization of this set of solutions can be found in
Il’in’s papers of 2000).
The results obtained by Il’in were included in the list of the most important
achievements of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2001.
In 2003 he found an explicit analytic form for boundary controls of spherical-
ly symmetric oscillations of a three-dimensional ball occurring over a time interval
equal to two radii of the ball (the speed of wave propagation is assumed equal to 1).
In 2002 Il’in was joined in this search for explicit forms of boundary controls
by E. I. Moiseev, and in their joint papers of 2002 and 2004 they presented in
explicit analytic form the boundary controls for a process described by the telegraph
 Vladimir Aleksandrovich Il’in 1167

equation over the time interval T = 2l for a control at one endpoint, and over the
time interval T = l for controls at both endpoints (these problems simulate control
of oil or gas pressure in a pipeline).
Starting from the end of 2004, they directed their efforts towards finding, for
various forms of boundary controls and for arbitrary sufficiently large time inter-
vals T , an explicit analytic form for optimal boundary controls minimizing the
corresponding boundary energy integral in the presence of constraints following
from the validity of the given initial conditions, the given terminal conditions, and
the matching condition for the initial and the terminal displacements. Optimization
was carried out for the following six boundary control problems:
• boundary control of the displacement or the elastic force at one endpoint
with the other endpoint fixed or free;
• boundary control of the displacements at both endpoints;
• boundary control of the elastic forces at both endpoints.
In papers published between the end of 2004 and the end of 2005 Il’in and Moiseev
first presented an explicit analytic form for optimal boundary controls in each of
the above six problems under the assumption that the time interval T is a multiple
of 2l for boundary conditions of the same kind at both endpoints and a multiple of
4l for boundary conditions of different kinds at both endpoints.
They published the fundamental complete results between November 2006 and
January 2008: they obtained explicit analytic forms for optimal boundary controls
on arbitrary sufficiently large time intervals T for each of the six problems. These
results were included in the list of the most important achievements of the Russian
Academy of Sciences in 2007.
It should be noted that even though a number of well-known authors (J.-L. Lions,
F. P. Vasil’ev, A. G. Butkovskii, A. I. Egorov, L. D. Akulenko, and others) had
treated boundary control problems and their optimization before the work of Il’in
and Moiseev, none of them had found an explicit analytic form for optimal bound-
ary controls.
Very recently Il’in proved that the optimal boundary controls are independent of
the choice of a point at which the initial and terminal displacements are matched.
We now describe selected results from the large number of papers by Il’in dealing
with problems in mathematical physics and the theory of functions and functional
analysis.
In two years after receiving his D.Sc. degree, Il’in obtained fundamental results on
the classical solubility of the mixed problem for a second-order hyperbolic equation.
He proved the solubility of this mixed problem in an arbitrary normal cylinder, that
is, a cylinder whose cross-section is a domain in which the Dirichlet problem for
the Laplace operator is soluble for any continuous boundary function. Before Il’in’s
papers, Ladyzhenskaya and Kh. L. Smolitskii had proved the solubility of this mixed
problem only for a cylindrical domain with boundary satisfying conditions of very
high smoothness which grows unboundedly with the dimension.
These results of Il’in, in combination with earlier results for parabolic and elliptic
equations due to Tikhonov, O. A. Oleinik, and H. Tautz, showed that in the sense of
the constraints imposed on the boundary, the solubility of boundary-value problems
and mixed problems for equations of all three types reduces to the solubility of the
1168 Vladimir Aleksandrovich Il’in

simplest problem of mathematical physics, the Dirichlet problem for the Laplace
equation.
In the same years Il’in, motivated by the need for mathematical models of the
laws of motion in inhomogeneous media and fields, published a large cycle of papers
on the solubility and the stability of solutions of boundary-value problems, mixed
problems, and eigenvalue problems for partial differential equations with disconti-
nuous coefficients. The exactness of the solubility conditions he obtained for these
problems is well described by the fact that when there are no discontinuities in
the coefficients, these conditions become the exact solubility conditions for the
corresponding problems with smooth coefficients (for example, his conditions for
second-order elliptic equations pass into Giraud’s conditions).
In the same period he obtained results showing that a classical solution (if it
exists) of the Dirichlet problem for an arbitrary second-order elliptic operator with
a homogeneous boundary condition in a completely arbitrary bounded domain
is a generalized solution of this problem in the class W21 . The equality of the
classical and generalized solutions was also proved for a mixed problem for a hyper-
bolic equation, and this enabled Il’in to develop a new effective method for proving
the uniqueness of the solution of the indicated mixed problem in an arbitrary cylin-
drical domain on the basis of only the fact that the system of eigenfunctions and
associated functions of the corresponding elliptic operator in the cross-section of
the domain is complete.
A universal method developed at the end of the 1960s became a fundamental
contribution of Il’in to the spectral theory of selfadjoint elliptic operators. For an
arbitrary selfadjoint extension of a second-order elliptic operator with arbitrary
spectrum in an arbitrary N -dimensional (not necessarily bounded) domain, the
method enabled him to obtain definitive conditions for the uniform convergence on
compact subsets of both spectral expansions themselves and their Riesz means in
the Nikol’skii function classes Hpα , the Sobolev–Liouville function classes Wpα , the
α
Besov function classes Bp,Θ , and the Zygmund–Hölder function classes C α .
For example, for a function compactly supported in an arbitrary N -dimensional
domain, definitive conditions for the uniform convergence of its spectral expansions
in each of the classes Hpα , Wpα , and Bp,Θ
α
are given by the requirement that the
(not necessarily integer) order α of differentiability and the integrability exponent
p satisfy Il’in’s three inequalities

N −1
α> , p · α > N, p > 1.
2
It was indeed remarkable that Il’in’s conditions for the uniform convergence of
spectral expansions proved to be definitive also for each specific spectral expan-
sion and, in particular, were found to be new and definitive for the expansion in
an N -dimensional Fourier integral and an N -multiple Fourier trigonometric series
(with spherical partial sums). These results were reported by Il’in as an invited
talk at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Nice in 1970.
During these years he also completely solved the problem of the validity of the
localization principle for spectral expansions both in the classical sense (that is, in
the sense of uniform convergence in a neighbourhood of a given point) and in the
 Vladimir Aleksandrovich Il’in 1169

generalized sense (that is, in the sense of convergence almost everywhere in a neigh-
bourhood of a given point). His idea about the generalized form of the localization
principle has been developed in the D.Sc. thesis of his student I. L. Bloshanskii.
In 1971 Il’in published a negative solution of the Gel’fand problem on the validity
of the theorem on equiconvergence of the spectral expansion and the Fourier integral
expansion in the case when the spectral expansion itself is not uniformly convergent.
He also obtained a similar result for the problem of Riesz equisummability. These
results showed that the subtle theorems he established earlier on conditions not
ensuring uniform convergence of spectral expansions or their Riesz means cannot
be obtained by using theorems on equiconvergence or equisummability.
In 1972 he published a negative solution of the problem posed by Sobolev on
convergence in the Wpl -metric, p ̸= 2, of the spectral expansion of a compactly
supported function in the class Wpl .
A new method developed by Il’in for estimating the remainder term of the spec-
tral function of an elliptic operator in both the L∞ -metric and the L2 -metric was
an outstanding result.
Before this work of Il’in there were attempts to estimate the remainder of the
spectral function in the L∞ -metric by many well-known authors (T. Carleman,
V. G. Avakumović, B. M. Levitan, L. Gårding, L. Hörmander, and others) using
various modifications of Carleman’s original method that were based on investi-
gation of the kernel of a certain function of the operator and then application
of a Tauberian theorem. Il’in’s method, based on a sophisticated analysis of the
Fourier transform of the leading term of the spectral function, has nothing in com-
mon with the methods of his predecessors.
He developed another original method for estimating the remainder term of
the spectral function of an elliptic operator, based on the idea that if ρ denotes the
geodesic distance induced by the Riemannian metric determined by the leading
coefficients of an elliptic operator, and Θ0 (ρ, τ, λ) denotes the spectral function of
the singular ordinary differential operator obtained from this elliptic operator by
considering functions dependent only on ρ, then the leading term of the spectral
function of the elliptic operator can be taken in the form Θ0 (|x − y|, 0, λ).
Il’in’s main results on the spectral theory of selfadjoint elliptic operators were
presented in his 1991 monograph, published in English by Plenum in 1995.
His papers on the spectral theory of the Schrödinger operator belong to the same
cycle of publications. For a selfadjoint extension on the whole infinite line R of the
Schrödinger operator with a singular potential satisfying only the so-called Kato
condition, Il’in proved in 1995 the theorem on the uniform equiconvergence on R
of the spectral expansion of an arbitrary function f (x) in Lp (R) (1 6 p 6 2) and
the Fourier integral expansion of the same function.
The work of Il’in and Moiseev in 1996–1998 was important for physical applica-
tions. For a selfadjoint extension in RN of the Schrödinger operator with a singular
potential satisfying only the Kato condition, they established sharp (with respect
to order) estimates for the spectral function on the diagonal and for its increment.
Il’in’s work on the spectral theory of non-selfadjoint differential operators was
a fundamental contribution to science. This work was preceded by Keldysh’s
well-known papers in which the completeness of a specially chosen system (called
1170 Vladimir Aleksandrovich Il’in

canonical by Keldysh) of eigenfunctions and associated functions was proved for

wide classes of boundary-value problems. However, Keldysh’s theory did not answer
a question topical for applications: does the constructed system form a basis, so
that an arbitrary function in some class can be expanded in this basis?
To answer this question, Il’in in 1980 suggested considering, for any linear ordi-
nary differential operator L of any order n on an interval (a, b), a function system
{uk (x)} (k = 1, 2, . . . ) which is complete and minimal in the Lp (a, b)-metric (p > 1
fixed) with each element uk (x) a regular (or a generalized) solution of the equation

Luk + λk uk = Θk uk−1

on (a, b) for some complex number λk , where Θk is 0 or 1 (in the last case λk = λk−1 )
and Θ1 = 0.
For all non-selfadjoint boundary-value problems for the operator L, the eigen-
functions and associated functions that have the property of being complete and
minimal in some Lp form such a system {uk (x)}, and this ensures the existence of
a biorthogonal conjugate system {vk (x)}.
Il’in proved that under certain conditions (quite close to necessary) on the set
{λk } the existence for any compact set K0 ⊂ (a, b) of a constant C(K0 ) with

∥uk ∥Lp (K0 ) ∥vk ∥Lp/(p−1) (a,b) 6 C(K0 ) (∗)

for all k is necessary and sufficient for the basis property of the system {uk (x)} in Lp
when p > 1, and is necessary and sufficient for the expansion of any Lp (a, b)-function
f (x) in a biorthogonal series in the system {uk (x)} to be uniformly equiconvergent
on any compact subset of (a, b) with the expansion of f (x) in an ordinary Fourier
trigonometric series when p > 1.
The theorem on a necessary and sufficient condition for equiconvergence when
p = 1, that is, in L1 , is the most difficult and, of course, the most interest-
ing here. Starting with Steklov’s famous paper, many distinguished mathemati-
cians (V. A. Steklov himself, J. D. Tamarkin, E. Titchmarsh, A. Haar, B. M. Levi-
tan, Ya. L. Geronimus, and others) established various equiconvergence theorems,
but only Il’in’s theorem made it possible not only to refine many of these theo-
rems but also to find for the first time the exact boundary beyond which equicon-
vergence fails.
Considered for p = 1, Il’in’s theorem allows one to assert, in particular, that if
condition (∗) is satisfied, then the spectral expansion of the L1 -function constructed
in Kolmogorov’s famous example1 diverges almost everywhere on the interval under
consideration.
We note that the conditions for the basis property and equiconvergence found
by Il’in are constructive, since for particular boundary-value problems the validity
or failure of condition (∗) and the conditions on the set {λk } can be seen from the

1 A. Kolmogoroff, “Une série de Fourier–Lebesgue divergente presque partout”, Fund. Math. 4

(1923), 324–328.
 Vladimir Aleksandrovich Il’in 1171

first terms of the asymptotic expansions of the eigenfunctions, associated functions,

1/n
and eigenvalues in powers of 1/λk .
A special case of the system {uk (x)} considered by Il’in is a system of exponen-
tials, and although very many mathematicians had dealt with expansions in such
systems, Il’in’s theorem made it possible to obtain new conditions for equiconver-
gence of expansions in a system of exponentials and in the trigonometric system.
In 1980–1992, for a non-selfadjoint ordinary differential operator of arbitrary
order and for a non-selfadjoint second-order elliptic operator, Il’in found estimates
sharp with respect to order for the L2 -norm over a compact subset K of the base
domain of an eigenfunction (or an associated function) in terms of the L2 -norm over
a compact set K ′ ⊂ K of an associated function of order higher by 1. He called these
inequalities estimates of anti-apriori type (since they estimate the function on the
right-hand side of the differential equation in terms of a solution of the equation).
He showed that such estimates play a key role in the theory of non-selfadjoint
operators.
The theory of estimates of anti-apriori type and their applications was developed
in the papers and theses of a number of Il’in’s students (V. D. Budaev, N. B. Keri-
mov, I. S. Lomov, A. S. Makin, and others).
In 1983 Il’in obtained another important result: for a second-order differential
operator he proved necessary and sufficient conditions for the Riesz basis property
of the system of its eigenfunctions and associated functions under minimal condi-
tions on the coefficients of the operator. In 1986 he generalized this result to the
case of a discontinuous operator, which is especially important for the investiga-
tion of problems with non-local boundary conditions in which the adjoint operator
is discontinuous.
The work carried out by Il’in together with Moiseev and K. V. Mal’kov in 1989
is certainly very interesting. Here it was shown that Il’in’s previously obtained
necessary and sufficient conditions for the basis property of the system of eigen-
functions and associated functions of a non-selfadjoint operator L are at the same
time necessary and sufficient for the existence of a complete system of integrals of
motion for a non-linear evolution system generated by the Lax (L-A) representation.
In 1991 Il’in considered a one-dimensional Schrödinger operator with a matrix
potential that is non-Hermitian and has complex-valued entries that are only integ-
rable on the base interval. He obtained constructive necessary and sufficient condi-
tions for the componentwise equiconvergence of the spectral expansion of a vector
function and its componentwise expansion in a Fourier trigonometric series. The
validity of the componentwise localization principle was first proved in this work.
In 1994 he demonstrated in joint work with Moiseev the failure of the basis
property in Lp for any p > 1 for the system of root functions of a boundary-value
problem posed already by Poincaré for the Laplace operator with directional deriva-
tive.
Il’in has authored more than 370 publications. He heads a major school of
research, and he has supervised the preparation of 28 D.Sc. theses and more than
100 Ph.D. theses in mathematics and physics, including Academician of the Rus-
sian Academy of Sciences E. I. Moiseev, Academician of the National Academy of
Sciences of Uzbekistan Sh. A. Alimov, and Corresponding Member of the Russian
1172 Vladimir Aleksandrovich Il’in

Academy of Sciences I. A. Shishmarev. A complete list of Il’in’s publications can

be found in the journal Differentsial’nye Uravneniya (34:5 (1998), 586–594; 39:5
(2003), 581–583; 44:5 (2008), 587–590), and also on pp. 662–692 of vol. 2 of his
Selected works (Moscow: Maks-Press, 2008, in Russian).
Within just the last year and a half Il’in published 7 papers in Doklady Akademii
Nauk (partially translated as Doklady: Mathematics), 8 papers in Differentsial’nye
Uravneniya (translated as Differential Equations), and 2 papers in Avtomatika i
Telemekhanika (translated as Automation and Remote Control ) — an indication of
the enduring intensity of his scientific activity.
At Moscow State University he is known as a brilliant lecturer who has made
enormous contributions to education there: he is the author of eight well-known
textbooks included in the Classical University Textbook series created in connection
with the 250th anniversary of MSU.
His achievements have received ample recognition. He has been awarded four
State Orders, the State Prize of the USSR (1980), the Lomonosov Prize for Science
(1980), the prize of the Ministry of Higher and Special Secondary Education of the
USSR for the best scientific work (1988), the Lomonosov Prize “For the creation
of unique university textbooks and for excellence in teaching” (1992), the title of
Professor Emeritus of Moscow State University (1993), the title of Honoured Citizen
of the town of Kozelsk (1998), the title of Best Lecturer of MSU (2000), and the
prize of the President of the Russian Federation in the field of education (2005).
V. A. Il’in has great personal charm, he is sensitive, open, and benevolent with
colleagues, especially with gifted young people. He is kind, generous, and sympa-
thetic. People around him are in awe of his many-sided interests and knowledge
and of his extraordinary memory.
With undiminished energy he presses on with his research, generously sharing
his ideas with his students and implementing ever-new creative plans. We wish
Vladimir Aleksandrovich good health and new achievements in all his undertakings!

O. M. Belotserkovskii, I. S. Lomov, E. I. Moiseev,

Yu. S. Osipov, V. A. Sadovnichii, and I. A. Shishmarev

Translated by V. KISIN