Google honours Russian mathematician Olga Ladyzhenskaya on 97th birth anniversary with a doodle

Google's doodle today celebrates the birth anniversary of influential Russian mathematician Olga Ladyzhenskaya. She was born in the rural town of Kologriv on this day in the year 1922. Her father was a teacher of mathematics and had descended from nobility.

She is best known for her work on partial differential equations. The mathematician authored hundreds of papers and was recognised with the Lomonosov Gold Medal in 2002.

Her love for the subject developed thanks to her father, and she had a special spot for algebra. However, life was not easy for her as she and her family struggled under the Soviet rule who had made life difficult for the intelligentsia.


Ladyzhenskaya graduated from secondary school with good grades, but was kept from enrolling at the Leningrad State University because her father was considered an “enemy of the nation”. Subsequently, she started teaching in an orphanage and at a secondary school before entering Moscow State University in 1943 and later went on to earn her doctorate from Leningrad State University. It was in Moscow State University, that she got the opportunity to study under famous mathematician Ivan Petrovsky.

She had to constantly work against political disturbances to pursue her research. It was only in 1989 that with the end of the Communist rule, she along with other Russian mathematicians got more freedom to travel.

Ladyzhenskaya started teaching at the university and later became a researcher at the Steklov Mathematical Institute, where she stayed until 1991 having climbed up the ranks to become head of the Laboratory of Mathematical Physics.

Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, she chose to stay in Russia despite the economic turmoil this brought. She became a member of the St Petersburg Mathematical Society from 1959, and eventually became the president in 1990.

She passed away in January 12, 2004 at the age of 81.

She had authored more than 250 papers during her lifetime. Her work on solving partial differential equations has continued to remain hugely influential and is recognised by institutions across the globe.