Lev Pontryagin

Lev Pontryagin
Lev Semyonovich Pontryagin (left)
Born	(1908-09-03)3 September 1908 Moscow, Russian Empire
Died	3 May 1988(1988-05-03) (aged 79) Moscow, Soviet Union
Nationality	Soviet Union
Known for	Pontryagin duality Pontryagin class Pontryagin cohomology operation Pontryagin's maximum principle Andronov–Pontryagin criterion
Scientific career
Fields	Mathematics
Doctoral advisor	Pavel Alexandrov
Doctoral students	Dmitri Anosov Vladimir Boltyansky Revaz Gamkrelidze Mikhail Postnikov Mikhail Zelikin

Lev Semyonovich Pontryagin (Russian: Лев Семёнович Понтрягин, also written Pontriagin or Pontrjagin, first name sometimes anglicized as Leon) (3 September 1908 – 3 May 1988) was a Soviet mathematician. Completely blind from the age of 14, he made major discoveries in a number of fields of mathematics, including algebraic topology, differential topology and optimal control.