David Milman

David Milman was born in 1913 in Chechelnyk

David Milman was born in 1913 in Chechelnyk, in the Podolia region of Russia. His father owned a shoe store, and his maternal grandfather was the town's rabbi. He studied Hebrew in a cheder and later attended a vocational chemistry school, where he met Israel Gelfand and began to take an interest in mathematics.

In 1929 his family moved to Odessa. He entered Odessa University in 1931 and finished his first degree in 1934. The authorities did not let him continue his studies until 1937, and in 1939 he earned a doctorate under Mark Krein.

From 1939 to 1945 he was an associate professor at the Polytechnic Institute. He then worked at the Odessa Institute of Communications until 1974 and headed its mathematics department from 1949 to 1966. His work developed methods of functional analysis and operator theory tied to problems in mathematical physics.

In 1973 he immigrated to Israel with his family and taught at Tel Aviv University until his death in 1982. He married physicist Nemo Chadikova in 1938, and their 3 sons all became mathematicians, including Vitali Milman and Pierre Milman.