Viktor Vladimirovich Wagner (or Vagner) (; 4 November 1908 – 15 August 1981) was a Russian mathematician. He is best known for his work in differential geometry and semigroup theorys.
Life Viktor Wagner was born in Saratov and studied at Moscow State University, where Veniamin Kagan was his advisor. He became the first geometry chair at Saratov State University in the mid-1930s. He received the Lobachevsky Medal in 1937. He retired from this chair in 1978.
During his career, Wagner was also awarded "the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner, and the title of Honoured Scientist RSFSR. Moreover, he was also accorded that rarest of privileges in the USSR: permission to travel abroad."Christopher Hollings (2014) Mathematics across the Iron Curtain: a history of the algebraic theory of semigroups, History of Mathematics 41, American Mathematical Society
Wagner is credited with noting that the collection of partial transformations on a set X forms a semigroup which is a subsemigroup of the semigroup of binary relations on the same set X, where the semigroup operation is composition of relations. "This simple unifying observation, which is nevertheless an important psychological hurdle, is attributed by Schein (1986) to V.V. Wagner."Peter M. Higgins (1992) Techniques of Semigroup Theory, page 5, Oxford University Press
Wagner died suddenly in the middle of the night, from 15 August to 16 August, 1981, at the age of 72, in Brest, Belarus, U.S.S.R..
See also Inverse semigroup Heap
References
Sources
External links
Wagner's Biography – in Russian