Nina Bari's work focused on trigonometric series. She refined the constructive method of proof to prove results in function theory, and her work is regarded as the foundation of function and trigonometric series theory.

Nina Karlovna Bari was born in Moscow on November 19, 1901, the daughter of Olga and Karl Adolfovich Bari, a physician. In the Russia of her youth, education was segregated by gender and the best academic opportunities reserved for males only. Bari attended a private high school for girls, but in 1918 she defied convention and sat for--and passed--the examination for a boy's high school graduation certificate.

In 1917, Russia's political and social structure was shattered by the Russian Revolution. The power vacuum left the country at the mercy of the czarists, socialist revolutionaries, and Bolsheviks. While many of Russia's universities closed at the beginning of the Revolution, the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow State University...