Levitsky, Jacob

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LEVITSKY, JACOB

LEVITSKY, JACOB (1904–1956), mathematician. Born in Ukraine, Levitsky was taken to Palestine as a child. He studied mathematics at Goettingen and Yale, and began to lecture at the Hebrew University in 1931. Under the influence of Emmy Noether he engaged in abstract algebra, notably in the theory of noncommutative rings. His work on the laws of rings with the minimum condition is regarded as a classic. In 1953 he and a pupil were awarded the first Israel Prize for exact sciences for their research on the law of identities of rings. The radical in associative rings – known as the Levitsky Radical – is named after him.

[Shimshon Avraham Amitsur]