Abram Besicovitch was born in
Berdyansk on the
Sea of Azov (now in
Ukraine) to a
Karaite Jewish family. He studied under the supervision of
Andrey Markov at the
Saint Petersburg Imperial University, graduating with a PhD in 1912, and then began research in
probability theory. He converted to
Eastern Orthodoxy, joining the
Russian Orthodox Church, on marrying in 1916. Besicovitch was appointed professor at the
University of Perm in 1917, and was caught up in the
Russian Civil War over the next two years. In 1920, he took a position at his alma mater, now renamed the
Petrograd State University. In 1924, he went to
Copenhagen on a
Rockefeller Fellowship, where he worked on
almost periodic functions under
Harald Bohr. A type of function space in that field now bears his name. After a visit to
G.H. Hardy at the
University of Oxford, he had appointments at the
University of Liverpool in 1926, and the
University of Cambridge in 1927. Besicovitch moved to Cambridge University in 1927, where he was made a Fellow of
Trinity College. In 1950, he was appointed to the
Rouse Ball Chair of Mathematics. In 1958, he retired and toured the US for eight years. After returning to Trinity, he died in 1970. He was appointed Lecturer in the Faculty of Mathematics, and therefore received recognition as a Cambridge MA by 'Special Grace' on 24 November 1928. He worked mainly on
combinatorial methods and questions in
real analysis, such as the
Kakeya needle problem and the
Hausdorff–Besicovitch dimension. These two particular areas have proved increasingly important as the years have gone by. The
Kovner–Besicovitch measure of the central symmetry of planar convex sets is also named after him. He was also a major influence on the economist
Piero Sraffa, after 1940, when they were both Fellows of Trinity, and on
Dennis Lindley, one of the founders of the
Bayesian movement in the United Kingdom. He was
J.E. Littlewood's successor in 1950 in the
Rouse Ball chair at the
University of Cambridge, retiring in 1958. He died in Cambridge. ==Awards and honours==