Ernest Vinberg

Ernest Borisovich Vinberg was a Soviet and Russian mathematician, born on 26 July 1937 and died on 12 May 2020, who worked on Lie groups and algebraic groups, discrete subgroups of Lie groups, invariant theory and representation theory. His name is attached to Vinberg's algorithm, used to study discrete reflection groups, and to the Koecher-Vinberg theorem. In 1983 he was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Warsaw, with a talk on discrete reflection groups in Lobachevsky spaces. He received the Humboldt Prize in 1997, served on the executive committee of the Moscow Mathematical Society, and in 2010 was elected an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His books include Linear Representations of Groups, A Course in Algebra, and, with A. L. Onishchik, Lie Groups and Algebraic Groups. He died of pneumonia caused by COVID-19 and his ashes were interred in the columbarium at Vagankovo Cemetery.