Early Years
A native of Kherson Governorate of the Russian Empire, Gelfand was born into a Jewish family in the small town of Okny (subsequently, Krasni Okny). According to his own account, Gelfand was expelled from high school because his father had been a mill owner. Bypassing both high school and college, he proceeded to postgraduate study at Moscow State University, where his advisor was the preeminent mathematician Andrei Kolmogorov. He nevertheless managed to attend lectures at the University and began postgraduate study at the age of 19.
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