Famous Jews from Chechelnik

You'll find below a list of famous Jews who were born or lived in Chechelnik.

David Milman

David Pinhusovich Milman (Chechelnik, 15 January 1912 – Tel Aviv, 12 July 1982) was a Soviet and later Israeli mathematician specializing in functional analysis. He was one of the major figures of the Soviet school of functional analysis. In the 70s he emigrated to Israel and was on the faculty of Tel Aviv University.

He was the son of Pinkhus Milman, a shoe store owner, and Sarah Gallant, the daughter of the Rabbi of Chechelnik.

He lived in Chechelnik until the age of 14 and studied at the Chemical School with his friend (also a mathematician who became a major) Israel Gelfand.

In the ninth grade (in 1928 , during the period of collectivization), Gelfand and Milman were excluded from vocational schools as children of "unearned elements" (Gelfand father at this time ran a mill cottage).

The Milmans moved to Odessa in 1929 where David received his Ph.D. from the Odessa State University in 1939 under direction of Mark Krein.

Milman is known for his development of functional analysis methods, particularly in operator theory, in close connection with concrete problems coming from mathematical physics, in particular differential equations and normal modes. The Krein–Milman theorem and the Milman–Pettis theorem are named after him.

He is the father of the mathematicians Vitali Milman and Pierre Milman.

For more information refer to Wikipedia (EN) and Wikipedia (RU)

Israel Gelfand

Israel Moiseevich Gelfand (Okny, Kherson, 2 September 1913 — New Jersey, 5 October 2009) was a Soviet mathematician who made major contributions to many branches of mathematics, including group theory, representation theory and functional analysis.

Gelfand was born into a Jewish family in the small town of Okny (subsequently, Krasni Okny) and studied at the Chemical School of Chechelnik with his friend David Milman, also a renowned mathematician.

In the ninth grade (in 1928 , during the period of collectivization), Gelfand and Milman were excluded from vocational schools as children of "unearned elements" (Gelfand father at this time ran a mill cottage).

Not being able to finish secondary education, because of heavy family responsibilities in February 1930 went to distant relatives in Moscow , some time was unemployed, engaged in daily work, was a supervisor in the Lenin Library, where he was engaged in self-education. In 1931 began to attend evening lectures in mathematics at several schools, including the Moscow State University where his advisor was the preeminent mathematician Andrei Kolmogorov and began postgraduate study at the age of 19.

The recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Order of Lenin and the Wolf Prize, he was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a lifelong academic, serving decades as a professor at Moscow State University and, after immigrating to the United States shortly before his 76th birthday, at the Busch Campus of New Jersey's Rutgers University.

He is known for having educated and inspired generations of students through his legendary seminar at Moscow State University. His legacy continues in the mathematicians who were his students, such as Endre Szemeredi, Alexandre Kirillov, Joseph Bernstein as well as his own son, Sergei Gelfand.

For more information refer to Wikipedia (EN) and Wikipedia (RU)

Clarice Lispector

Chaya Lispector (Chechelnik, 10 December 1920 – Rio de Janeiro, 9 December 1977) was a Brazilian writer. Acclaimed internationally for her innovative novels and short stories, she was also a journalist.

She was the youngest of three daughters of Pinkhas Lispector and Mania Krimgold Lispector. Her family suffered terribly in the pogroms during the Russian Civil War that followed the dissolution of the Russian Empire, circumstances later dramatized by her older sister Elisa Lispector's autobiographical novel No exilio (In Exile, 1948). They eventually managed to flee to Romania, from where they emigrated to Brazil, where her mother Mania had relatives. They sailed from Hamburg and arrived in Brazil in the early months of 1922, when Chaya was little more than a year old. The Lispectors changed their names upon arrival. Pinkhas became Pedro; Mania became Marieta; Leah became Elisa, and Chaya became Clarice.

She grew up in northeastern Brazil, where her mother died when she was nine. The family moved to Rio de Janeiro when she was in her teens. While in law school in Rio she began publishing her first journalistic work and short stories, catapulting to fame at age 23 with the publication of her first novel, Near to the Wild Heart (Perto do Coracao Selvagem), written as an interior monologue in a style and language that was considered revolutionary in Brazil.

She left Brazil in 1944, following her marriage to a Brazilian diplomat, and spent the next decade and a half in Europe and the United States. Upon return to Rio de Janeiro in 1959, she began producing her most famous works, including the stories of Family Ties (Lacos de Familia) and the great mystic novel The Passion According to G.H. (A Paixao Segundo G.H.). Injured in an accident in 1966, she spent the last decade of her life in frequent pain, steadily writing and publishing novels and stories until her premature death in 1977.

She has been the subject of numerous books, and references to her and her work are common in Brazilian literature and music. Several of her works have been turned into films and she was the subject of a recent biography, Why This World, by Benjamin Moser.

For more information refer to Wikipedia (EN)