Victor Isakov

Victor Isakov, Distinguished Professor Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Physics at Wichita State University, passed away May 14, 2021 at the age of 73. He was internationally recognized as a leading authority in the area of inverse problems in partial differential equations. He organized numerous conferences around the world, and his research garnered continuous support by the National Science Foundation from 1990 until his death. He was born on November 4, 1947 in Stalinsk (renamed Novokuznetsk), Siberia. He received his PhD from the (Sobolev) Institute of Mathematics, Novosibirsk, Russia (USSR) in 1973, then started research (inverse gravimetry and related topics) as a member of the same Institute while simultaneously teaching as an associate professor of the Novosibirsk State University. Granted his exit visa from the USSR in 1987, he left for the USA, staying for two months as a visiting professor at the University of Florence. He was also a visiting researcher at the Courant Institute of New York University, Cornell University, and University of Minnesota before being appointed a Professor at Wichita State University in 1988. In 2006 he was designated Distinguished Professor by the Kansas Board of Regents. He was one of the world’s leading experts on inverse problems in partial differential equations, the research area with important applications in engineering, finance, geophysics, and medicine. He presented two widely cited research monographs, and wrote 140 influential papers on many important mathematical problems, both theoretical and applied, which were published in leading international journals. He presented his results at about 100 national and international conferences, and held visiting positions at Rutgers University, University of California at Berkeley (MSRI), Radon Institute (Linz, Austria), University of Tokyo, University of Florence and University of Trieste, Italy. Besides being a world-class mathematician, Victor was an excellent pianist, an avid reader, photographer, and gardener, and a generous man who was a model of how to be a good listener, hearing everything with interest and missing nothing. Victor was preceded in death by his parents, Mikhail Petrovich Isakov and Evdokiya Anisimovna Isakova. He is survived by his wife of 22 years, WSU Professor of Piano Julie Bees, stepdaughter Alina Amstutz, and sister Liudmila Osipova. A memorial service will be held Sunday, June 20 at 3:00 p.m. in Wiedemann Hall on the WSU campus. Services in care of Downing & Lahey East Mortuary.