Sergey Degayev - American Mathematician

American Mathematician

From South America Degayev moved to the United States; there he joined his wife, Lyubov Degayeva. His brother, Vladimir Degayev, who worked at the time in a Russian consulate in the United States and moonlighted as a foreign correspondent for a few Russian publications printed an article claiming that Sergey Degayev was killed in New Zealand, discouraging searches for him by both Russian police and Russian revolutionaries.

Both Vladimir and Sergey Degayevs were registered in the USA under the name Polevoi after their maternal grandfather Nikolai Polevoy. After his naturalization Alexander (Sergey) took the name Alexander Pell and his wife took the name Emma Pell. At first they were poor; Sergey worked as a stevedore and as an unskilled labourer while his wife worked as a cook and a laundress. In 1895 Alexander was enrolled into a Ph.D. program in Johns Hopkins University with majors in mathematics and astronomy and a minor in English. During his study he was financially supported by his wife who continued to work as a cook. He received his doctorate in 1897 for the dissertation On the Focal Surfaces of the Congruences of Tangents to a Given Surface.

The University of South Dakota was established in the frontier town of Vermillion and started its classes in 1882. In 1897 they decided that they needed a professor of mathematics. They asked Professor L S Hulburt from John Hopkins if he could suggest a suitable candidate. He replied that he "could suggest a first class mathematician who had the disadvantage of having a strong Russian brogue". The reply from South Dakota was "Send your Russian mathematician along, brogue and all".

Alexander Pell was immensely popular among his students who referred to him as the "class father" and "Jolly Little Pell" (who could "crack jokes faster than the freshmen could crack nuts"). He was a good researcher, a member of the American Mathematical Society and the author of many journal publications. He was also an accomplished administrator who organized the School of Engineering of the University of South Dakota and became its first Dean (1905).

Alexander Pell had a habit of providing financial support from his own resources, and providing accommodation in his house to a few of his students. One such student was Anna Johnson, the future accomplished mathematician Anna Johnson Pell Wheeler. Anna Johnson received her A.B. degree under Pell's supervision in 1903 and continued her study at the University of Iowa and then at the University of Göttingen. In 1904 Emma Pell died. Three years later Alexander Pell went to Göttingen and married Anna in July 1907. They both returned to Vermillion where Anna taught classes in the theory of functions and differential equations and Alexander was the Dean of Engineering. In 1908 Pell resigned from the University of South Dakota and went with Anna to Chicago. There Anna completed her doctorate under E. H. Moore, while Pell took a position at the Armour Institute of Engineering (currently Illinois Institute of Technology). In 1911 Pell suffered a stroke and was unable to work thereafter. The same year the Pells moved to South Hadley, Massachusetts where Anna taught at Mount Holyoke College. In 1918 they moved again to Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania where Anna taught at Bryn Mawr College. Alexander Pell died in Bryn Mawr in 1921.

Despite his past as a political activist Alexander Pell was not much involved in American politics although he always voted for the Republican Party (his former comrades from Narodnaya Volya considered Republicans "ultra-bourgeois"). His opinion about his former country was strongly negative. He never spoke Russian at home. During the Russo-Japanese War he supported Japan. After the October Revolution and beginning of the Red Terror he wrote: "Accursed Russia: even after liberating herself, she does not let people live".