Nina Bari | Biography

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 reopened in 1918, and began accepting applications from women. Records show that Bari was the first woman to attend the university and was probably the first woman to graduate from it. Russia's educational institutions were in the same turmoil as the society around them. Graduation exams were scheduled on a catch-as-can basis, and Bari took advantage of the disorder to sit for her examinations early. She graduated from Moscow State in 1921--just three years after entering the university.

After graduation, Bari began her teaching career. She lectured at the Moscow Forestry Institute, the Moscow Polytechnic Institute, and the Sverdlov Communist Institute. Bari applied for and received the only paid research fellowship awarded by the newly created Research Institute of Mathematics and Mechanics. (Ten postgraduate students were accepted at the Research Institute; Bari won the stipend because her name appeared first on the alphabetically arranged list. According to a colleague, she shared the stipend with her fellow students.)

As a student, Bari was drawn to an elite group nicknamed the Luzitania--an informal academic and social organization. These scholars clustered around Nikolai Nikolaevich Luzin, a noted mathematician who rejected any area of mathematical study but function theory. With Luzin as her inspiration, Bari plunged into the study of trigonometric series and functions. She developed her thesis around the topic and presented the main results of her research to the Moscow Mathematical Society in 1922--the first woman to address the society. In 1926, she defended her thesis, and her work earned her the Glavnauk Prize.

In 1927, Bari took advantage of an opportunity to study in Paris at the Sorbonne and the College de France. She then attended the Polish Mathematical Congress in Lvov, Poland; a Rockefeller grant enabled her to return to Paris to continue her studies. Bari's decision to travel may have been influenced by the disintegration of the Luzitanians. Luzin's irascible, demanding personality had alienated many of the mathematicians who had gathered around him. By 1930, all traces of the Luzitania movement had vanished, and Luzin left Moscow State for the Academy of Science's Steklov Institute.

Bari returned to Moscow State in 1929 and in 1932 was made a full professor. In 1935, she was awarded the degree of Doctor of the Physical-Mathematical Sciences, a more prestigious research degree than the traditional Ph.D.

In 1936, during the dictatorship of Josef Stalin, Bari's mentor, Luzin, was charged with ideological sabotage. For some reason--possibly Stalin's preoccupation with more important enemies of the state--Luzin's trial was canceled. Luzin was officially reprimanded and withdrew from academia.

Bari managed to avoid the taint of association. She and D.E. Men'shov took charge of function theory work at Moscow State during the 1940s. In 1952, she published an important piece on primitive functions, and trigonometric series and their almost everywhere convergence. Bari also presented works at the 1956 Third All-Union Congress in Moscow and the 1958 International Congress of Mathematicians in Edinburg.

Mathematics was the center of Bari's intellectual life, but she enjoyed literature and the arts. She was also a mountain hiking enthusiast and tackled the Caucasus, Altai, Lamir, and Tyan'shan' mountain ranges in Russia. Bari's interest in mountain hiking was inspired by her husband, Viktor Vladmirovich Nemytski, a Soviet mathematician, Moscow State professor, and an avid mountain explorer. There is no documentation of their marriage available, but contemporaries believe the two married later in life.

Bari's last work--her 55th publication--was a 900-page monograph on the state of the art of trigonometric series theory, which is recognized as a standard reference work for those specializing in function and trigonometric series theory.

Bari died July 15, 1961, when she fell in front of a train at the Moscow Metro. Colleagues, however, suspect her death was suicide; they speculate she was despondent over the death of Luzin in 1950, who some believe had been not only her mentor but her lover.