1. Victor Petrovich Havin: Life, Works, Seminar, and Pupils
Presented by N.Nikolski, Euler Intl Institute, June 2016

2. Victor Havin,

3. Life

4. Havin’s Outline: Born: March 7, 1933 (St.Petersburg)
Havin’s family survived from the collapse of WW II in evacuation at Tashkent (Uzbekistan)
1949 – Soviet atomic bomb explosed
– Havin: Student, Mathematics and Mechanics Department of St.Petersburg University
(Photo: Havin, 1954)

5. Choice of Mathematics as a destiny: by political reasons…

6. 1953 – Stalin’s death
– KGB inspired « Doctors-killers plot » national hysteria, a new stage of the state antijews campaigne
Havin: Graduated studies at St.Petersburg University (under Vladimir Smirnov and Leonid Kantorovich, future Nobel Prize winner in economics)
1956 – Nikita Khruschev’s « destalinization »
1956 – Soviet tanks ecrase Hungary revolution
Havin takes Ph.D. from SPb University
1961 – Cuba crisis

7. 1959 – 2015 – Havin: Professor at St
1959 – 2015 – Havin: Professor at St.Petersburg University (assistant 1959, associate 1962, full ).
(Photo: 1962; 1963 kolkhoz forced manual gratis work)

8. 1962 – Beginning of Havin’s Analysis Seminar: 1962 – 3 participants,,
1970 – 25,
since 1980 – more than 50

9. 1968 – «Prague Spring» («socialism with a human face») and unworthy Soviet invasion
1974 – Havin got his first permission to leave the country (inside the «socialist camp»); Cuba (1974), Czechoslovakia (1976)
Soviet tanks in Prague, 1968
At Charles University,1996(?)

10. 1991 – break-down of the Soviet Union deserting the seminar rooms and student classes
Boris Eltsin on a tank, August 1991
At a separation point: May 1991, before last joint seminar…

11. 1993-2003 – Havin: teaching at McGill University
1993 – Havin received Doctor Honoris Causa degree at Linköping University
– Havin: teaching at McGill University
Linköping ceremony
During a break between lectures, McGill U. (Havin, P.Koosis, S.Smirnov)

12. 1996 – Spenser Lecturer at Kansas State University
2000 – The Onsager Professor at Trondheim University
2003 – Distinguish Researcher of the R.F.
2011 – Chebyshev Prize of St.Petersburg City Counsil

13. Research

14. Starting Point: Havin as an autodidact:
there was an analysis school - V.I.Smirnov, G.Fichtenholtz, L.Kantorovich, G.Akilov, and…

15. Starting Point: Havin as an autodidact: …
… and V.Havin, a Ph.D. student ( ) with a suggestion of a «free choice of research subject»…
• Fast evolution from « soft » to « hard » Analysis

16. Havin’s Favorite Fields:
I. Yearly Years - Genre Searching
(Separation of singularities, Golubev series, Fourier coefficients of bounded functions, and so on)

17. II. Rational Approximation III
II. Rational Approximation III. Principle of « Half-Smoothness » of a holomorphic F vs |F| IV. Non-linear Potential Theory, in longlasting collaboration with V.Maz’ya V. Weak Completeness of L₁/H₁

18. VI. Uncertainty Principle in Harmonic Analysis
(with V.Maz’ya, B.Jöricke, F.Nazarov, E.Malinnikova J.Mashreghi, A.Baranov, et al.)
Ufa conference in approximation theory, 1980

19. VII. Cauchy Problem for Laplacian (with V. Maz’ya, A. Aleksandrov, J
VII. Cauchy Problem for Laplacian (with V.Maz’ya, A.Aleksandrov, J.Bourgain, et al.) VIII. Approximation by Harmonic Vector Fields (with E.Malinnikova, S.Smirnov, et al.)
IX. Admissible Majorants for Model (deBranges) Spaces (with J.Mashreghi, Yu.Lyubarsky, A.Baranov, et al.)

20. Havin’s Seminar, and Havin’s Pupils

21. Founding one of the World Largest Analysis Seminars:
Ph.D. defended under Havin :
– 31
Including 3 Salem Prize winners – A.Aleksandrov, F.Nazarov, S.Smirnov

22. Havin’s Exceptional Achievement: Creation of a Highly Active Analysis Community around the Hardy Space Ideology
Havin’s Scientific descendants, following Math Genealogy Project: …
Including 9 Salem Prize winners: three above, and then A.Volberg, S.Treil, N.Makarov, S.Petermichl, Zhen Dapeng, D.Chelkak, …
Including Fields Medal of Stas Smirnov (Havin’s math great-grandson)

23. Notable Visitors/Seminar Speakers included:
H.Shapiro, A.Shields, Y.Domar, P.Duren, P.Koosis, P.Gauthier, J.Conway, J.M.Anderson, L.Hedberg, M.Essen, L.deBranges (1984, solving at place the Bieberbach Conjecture), Ch.Davis, L.Ehrenpreis, J-P Kahane, G.Pisier, D.Sarason, J.Korevaar, R.Rochberg, B.Fuglede, E.Amar, C.Berenstein, …

24. More pictures around seminar

25. More pictures around seminar

26. A few milestone results:
1980: Smooth Hankel Operators (V.Peller)
1982: Inner Functions in ℂⁿ (A.Aleksandrov)
1985: LogLog law for conformal mappings (N.Makarov)
1988, : Matrix /Operator Corona Problem (Sz.-Nagy problem, etc) , S.Treil
1996 – 2015: The Bellman Function Method (F.Nazarov, S.Treil, A.Volberg)

27. Milestone results, cont’d:
1997 – 2004: Calderon-Zygmund Operators on nonhomogeneous spaces (F.Nazarov, S.Treil, A.Volberg, S.Petermichl)
: Model and DeBranges Spaces (A.Aleksandrov, V.Havin, J.Mashreghi, N.Makarov, A.Poltoratskii, A.Baranov)

28. Remembering Victor Petrovich Havin
A God-given mentor – never suppressed his pupils, neither by his own learning nor by galloping, but teaching by a passion inspiring
V.P.’s sayings on his beloved pure Analysis: « a technical crawled analysis», but «analysis techniques should be always ready as keeping powder dry»
Much influenced by G.Hardy’s
«A Mathematician’s Apology»

29. Havin’s currently speaking phrases:
«Walk to Canossa» (or «Humiliation of Canossa»), as Henry IV to Pope Gregory VII, 1077 – when coming to get a permission for having a jew student, or for a PhD defence overcoming the «2/5 rule»
«Never beg for nothing, especially from those who is stronger than you» (Woland to Margarita)

30. Remembering Havin
• Propheting the main streams in Analysis since 1960, in particular the «Hardy spaces obsession/philosophy» which celebrate 100 years in 2015, and 50 years in Havin’s Seminar
• An incomparably emotional leader – involving everybody just by his own implication, never pressing by the authority
• A very rare unmercenary who never understood what the money is
• Natural, artless Stoic (in front of the life hardness, including unprecedented insults against the Jewish self-identity during the Soviet era)

31. Thank You!