Obituary of Tatyana A. Germogenova

Tatiana Germogenova, professor of mathematics at Institute of Applied Mathematics (Moscow, Russia), died of cancer on 27 February 2005 in Moscow.

She was born on 10 April 1930 in Moscow. The scientific activity of Prof. T. Germogenova was associated with solving of mathematical, physical, and computational problems of radiation transport theory and reactor physics.

She started working on the transport theory problems in 1953 during the post graduate course of Physical Department of the Moscow State University. Prof. E. S. Kusnetsov was her post graduate work supervisor. T. Germogenova was the staff member of the Institute of Applied Mathematics of Russian Academy of Sciences for almost 50 years (since 1956). Her PhD thesis (1957) was dedicated to the solution of the transport equation for highly peaked phase functions. In 1962 she proved the principle of maximum for linear transport equation. This quite general result can be used, particularly, in the study of convergence properties of some difference schemes for transport equation. Her Doctor of Mathematical Sciences degree thesis (1972) was dedicated to boundary problems of transport equation and local properties of its solutions. The results obtained by T. Germogenova in the mathematical study of resolvability, smoothness properties and singularities of the transport equatio! n solutions in dependence on medium and source properties are collected in her monograph The local properties of transport equation solutions (1986, in Russian).

T. Germogenova has been involved in the solution of a number important atmospheric optics problems (e.g., 3-D radiative transport in cloudy media). She proved that the set of physically realizable states of polarized light in the Stokes-Poincare representation is a cone in an appropriate functional space of four-dimensional vector-functions (1978). Next, this property was used for strict formulation both the non-negativity property of the scattering matrix and the mathematical theory of the characteristic equation for the polarized light transport equation. T. Germogenova also has received the set of asymptotical approximations for transport problems in optically thick inhomogeneous finite size regions (1961). Some of them are used for solving remote sensing and inverse atmospheric problems. She also developed a number of widely used numerical and analytical techniques like the method of averaged fluxes for acceleration of inner iterations convergence (1968, 1969), Fourier analysis of stability of the WDD scheme, accuracy and stability analysis of the family of weighted nodal schemes (1994), eigenfunctions of the finite moments method analysis (1996). Under her guidance a set of codes for 1D, 2D and 3D transport calculations has been developed for serial and parallel computers.

Prof. T. Germogenova had participated in a number of international meetings on transport theory, was co-organizer of the Joint Workshop on Numerical Transport Theory (November 1-6, 1991, in the Memorial Student Center of Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA) and International Symposium on Numerical Transport Theory (26-28 May, 1992, in the Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia). She was also the member of Transport Theory and Statistical Physics Journal Editorial Board. Prof. T. A. Germogenova is 1987 year State Prize winner. Being the Moscow State University student, she was a swimming titleholder of the University. She was also a good skier (both plain and mountain), participated in a number of boating and mountaineering travels, and was a connoisseur of the classic music. Her insightful scientific contributions and keen wit are greatly missed.

Co-workers of the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics of RAS

Moscow, Russia