Abraham Zelmanov

Abraham Leonidovich Zelmanov was born on May 15, 1913, in Poltava Gubernya of the Russian Empire. His father was a Judaic religious scientist, a specialist in comments on Torah and Kabbalah. In 1937 Zelmanov completed his education at the Mechanical Mathematical Department of Moscow University. After 1937 he was a research-student at the Sternberg Astronomical Institute in Moscow, where he presented his dissertation in 1944. In 1953 he was arrested for "cosmopolitism" in Joseph Stalin's campaign against Jews. However, as soon as Stalin died, Zelmanov was set free, after some months of imprisonment. For several decades Zelmanov and his paralyzed parents lived in a room in a flat shared with neighbours. He took everyday care of his parents, so they lived into old age. Only in the 1970s did he obtain a personal municipal flat. He was married three times. Zelmanov worked on the academic staff of the Sternberg Astronomical Institute all his life, until his death on the winter's day, 2 February 1987.

Solving Einstein's equations with his mathematical apparatus of chronometric invariants, Zelmanov obtained the total system of all cosmological models (scenarios of the Universe's evolution) which could be possible as derived from the equations. In particular, he had arrived at the possibility that infinitude may be relative. Later, in the 1950s, he enunciated the Infinite Relativity Principle:

Zelmanov liked to remark that he preferred to make mathematical "instruments" than to use them in practice. Perhaps thereby his main goal in science was the mathematical apparatus of physical observable quantities in the General Theory of Relativity, completed in 1941-1944, and known as the theory of chronometric invariants. Many researchers were working on the theory of observable quantities in the 1940s. For example, Landau and Lifshitz, in their famous the Classical Theory of Fields first published in 1941, introduced observable time and the observable three-dimensional interval, similar to those introduced by Zelmanov. But they limited themselves to this particular case only. Only Zelmanov arrived at general mathematical methods to define physical observable quantities in pseudo-Riemannian spaces, and collected all the methods in complete theory. In developing the apparatus he also created other mathematical methods, namely — kinemetric invariants and monad formalism.

Abraham Zelmanov (May 15, 1913 – February 2, 1987), was a prominent scientist working in the General Theory of Relativity and cosmology. He first constructed, in 1944, the complete mathematical method to calculate physical observable quantities in the General Theory of Relativity (the theory of chronometric invariants). Applying the mathematical apparatus, in the 1940s, he established the basics of the theory of inhomogeneous anisotropic universe, where he determined specific kinds of all cosmological models — scenarios of evolution — which could be theoretically conceivable for a truly inhomogeneous and anisotropic Universe in the framework of Einstein's theory.