| Ivan Petrovsky | |
| Birth Name: | Ivan Georgiyevich Petrovsky |
| Birth Date: | 18 January 1901 |
| Birth Place: | Sevsk, Oryol Governorate, Russian Empire |
| Death Place: | Moscow, Soviet Union |
| Workplaces: | Moscow State University Steklov Institute of Mathematics |
| Alma Mater: | Moscow State University |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Dmitri Egorov |
| Doctoral Students: | Olga Ladyzhenskaya Evgenii Landis Olga Oleinik Sergei Godunov Aleksei Filippov |
| Known For: | Hyperbolic partial differential equations Kolmogorov–Petrovsky–Piskunov equation Petrovsky lacuna |
Ivan Georgiyevich Petrovsky (Russian: Ива́н Гео́ргиевич Петро́вский; 18 January 1901 – 15 January 1973) was a Soviet mathematician working mainly in the field of partial differential equations. He greatly contributed to the solution of Hilbert's 19th and 16th problems, and discovered what are now called Petrovsky lacunas. He also worked on the theories of boundary value problems, probability, and on the topology of algebraic curves and surfaces.
Petrovsky was a student of Dmitri Egorov. Among his students were Olga Ladyzhenskaya, Evgenii Landis, Olga Oleinik and Sergei Godunov.
Petrovsky taught at Steklov Institute of Mathematics. He was a member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union since 1946 and was awarded Hero of Socialist Labour in 1969. He was the president of Moscow State University (1951–1973) and the head of the International Congress of Mathematicians (Moscow, 1966).
He died in Moscow, and was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery.
the original paper translated in, and also in the Russian Mathematical Surveys, 1981, 36:1, 1–8.
an English translation of the paper .