Anatolii (or Anatoly, in English) Karatsuba was born on 31 January 1937 in Grozny, Russia. He studied at Moscow State University between 1954 and 1959, and it was there that he first discovered his algorithm for the fast multiplication of large numbers, which he published with Ofman in 1962. His advisor at MSU was Kolmogorov , famous for his work in Probability and specifically Markov processes. He later moved to the Steklov Institute of Mathematics in the department of number theory, and has been head of that department since 1983. He has authored or co-authored several books on number theory, including Complex Analysis in Number Theory , which just came out in 1995.
In addition to the fast multiplication algorithm, Karatsuba has written important papers on finite automata theory, trigonometric sums and integrals, the Riemann-Zeta function, and Dirichlet characters. He has authored more than 115 scientific papers, in addition to editing various Russian math journals.
Karatsuba has conquered many challenging mathematical proofs, but he also enjoys mountaineering, having conquered the highest summits of the Caucasus and Fann mountain ranges.
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