| Georgy Voronyi | |
| Birth Name: | Georgy Feodosevich Voronyi (Георгій Феодосійович Вороний) |
| Other Names: | Georgiy Feodosiyovich Voronyi (Георгій Феодосійович Вороний; Russian Empire |
| Birth Date: | 28 April 1868 |
| Birth Place: | Zhuravka, Poltava Governorate, Russian Empire |
| Death Place: | Warsaw, Congress Poland, Russian Empire |
| Fields: | Continued fractions |
| Workplaces: | University of Warsaw |
| Alma Mater: | Saint Petersburg University |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Andrey Markov |
| Doctoral Students: | Wacław Sierpiński Boris Delaunay |
| Known For: | Voronoi diagram (Voronyi Tessellation) Voronoi iteration Voronoi formula |
Georgy Feodosevich Voronyi (Russian: Георгий Феодосьевич Вороной; Ukrainian: Георгій Феодосійович Вороний; 28 April 1868 – 20 November 1908) was an Imperial Russian mathematician of Ukrainian descent noted for defining the Voronoi diagram.[1] [2]
Voronyi was born in the village of Zhuravka, Pyriatyn, in the Poltava Governorate, which was a part of the Russian Empire at that time and is in Varva Raion, Chernihiv Oblast, Ukraine.
Beginning in 1889, Voronyi studied at Saint Petersburg University, where he was a student of Andrey Markov. In 1894 he defended his master's thesis On algebraic integers depending on the roots of an equation of third degree. In the same year, Voronyi became a professor at the University of Warsaw, where he worked on continued fractions. In 1897, he defended his doctoral thesis On a generalisation of a continuous fraction. He was an Invited Speaker of the ICM in 1904 at Heidelberg.[3]
When he was only 40 years of age, Voronyi began having stomach problems. He wrote in his diary:[4]
Following a severe gall bladder attack, Voronyi died on November 20, 1908.
Voronyi introduced the concept of what we today call Voronoi diagrams or tessellations. They are used in many areas of science, such as the analysis of spatially distributed data, having become an important topic in geophysics, meteorology, condensed matter physics, and Lie groups.
These tessellations are widely used in many areas of computer graphics, from architecture to film making and video games. Blender 3D includes a Voronoi texture generator as one of its main sources of randomly generated images, that can be applied as textures for many different uses.
Among his students was Wacław Sierpiński (Ph.D. at Jagiellonian University in 1906). Although he was not formally the doctoral advisor of Boris Delaunay (Ph.D. at Kyiv University), his influence on the latter earns him the right to be considered so.[5]
In 2008, Ukraine released two-hryvnia coins commemorating the centenary of Voronyi's death.[6]
His son became a prominent transplant surgeon who performed the world's first human-to-human kidney transplant in 1933,[7] volunteered for the army of Central Council of Ukraine, and fought in the Battle of Kruty.[8] His daughter Mariia Vorona-Vasylenko became a teacher of Ukrainian language.[9]