Name: Marshall Donnelly Combs Funeral Home
Address: Nashville, TN

I got to know Mark in the early 2000s at Mathcamp, a summer program for high school students where he taught.  I was saddened to hear of his passing on the alumni mailing list last month, and shared his famous "Good job" video with my wife.

Tonight I was working on my own research project and ran across a post of his on math.stackexchange that precisely answered the question I was curious about.  He had a passion for teaching and explaining mathematics, and his contributions to the discipline will be with us all for many years to come.  He will be missed.

I knew Mark for more than 40 years. We met for the first time at the end of the 70’s - my friend Evgeniy Sukhanov told me a year before about a brilliant young student actively participating in the internationally famous Professor L. N. Shevrin’s Seminar in Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg).

We met with Mark many times during the Algebraic Conferences and we had common points of interest in Combinatorial Semigroup Theory.

Mark’s talks were always exceptional. He combined a very deep knowledge of various areas of Modern Algebra and other branches of Mathematics with phenomenal intuition. He was able to obtain bright results using elegant proofs with links from one area to another.

I often remember a joint trip with Mark and Misha Volkov to Australia to the Conference in honor of G.B. Preston in Melbourne and Workshop on Semigroups in Sydney in 1990. Mark suggested to look at the preliminary text of my first talk. He came to my room late at night and carefully read everything - giving very helpful advice regarding slides (that I never used before).
We had very interesting discussions after my talk at the Conference in York in 1993 during which he posed a conjecture about connections between the growth and unavoidable words, and during the Conference in St. Petersburg in honor of E.S. Lyapin in 1995 where I also was invited to be a speaker.

Mark was one of the first who offered his help and supported me when I immigrated to the US. I will always remember him.

My prayers are with all Mark’s wonderful family.

Lev Shneerson


Mark was easily one of the most influential people in my mathematical career. I’m sure there are many accounts by people with the same experience. Instead of describing that aspect of Mark, I think it would be better for me to mention an aspect of Mark that may be less commonly understood. Mark’s love and passion for the outdoors was matched by only a few people I have had the pleasure to meet.  We began our shared outdoor experiences with hikes that included some of our children. Mark loved the taste of smoked wild duck and goose and very much wanted to try hunting. I was hesitant at first, because it’s a bit dangerous and conditions can be brutal. You must be on the lake in the winter, an hour before sunrise. Bad weather conditions make for good hunting. The boat ride is cold, damp and you simply cannot make a mistake. Temperatures are often below freezing and where I hunt there is little to no cover. The wind is often stiff and you must remain motionless when birds are within eyesight. So why do it? The sunrise on the lake during full migration is spectacular. The color in the sky and symphony of migrating birds is a unique experience. It’s costly! No matter how warm you dress, you will get cold. When ducks and geese are lured close enough, you simply don’t notice the harsh elements. When Mark took his first goose, I may have been as excited as he was, but probably not. Sharing that experience with a dog and a friend is a rare and wonderful experience and I am fortunate to have shared it with Mark. I miss him dearly and I’m sure I will always remember his companionship when I’m on the lake without him. 

Mark Sapir has done an incredible amount of mathematics in his not so long life, and would have done even more if fate had decreed differently.  For me, this was my dearest colleague with whom I have worked closely for decades.  It was a real pleasure to work with him.  His enthusiasm and inventiveness invariably ignited even such an inert person as myself.  In addition to our mathematical connection, there was also a personal one, and I visited Mark more than once in both Lincoln, NE and Nashville, TN, where he worked.  I have always been captivated by his charm and sincerity.  I also had the opportunity to interact with his big, wonderful family. My condolences to his relatives. I am experiencing a heavy loss with them.

    Dear Olga,

My sincere condolences and deepest sympathy to you and the entire family. I was not aware that Mark was so ill and was grieved to hear that he passed away. In these difficult moments, one likes to remember Mark's qualities, as they shone truly bright: his optimism, energy and drive, his great enthusiasm for mathematics, openness of mind and imagination, his cheerfulness when facing difficulties and his great sense of humour.  

I was deeply saddened when I learned about the  untimely passing of Mark.  I knew Mark for many years as  a prominent scholar and a remarkable person. As Director of Atlantic Algebra Centre at Memorial University of Newfoundland, I had an honour to welcome him in St. John's, Newfoundland, as our mini course lecturer. My colleagues and myself keep fond memories of this event. My wife Galina and myself would like to express our sincere condolences to Olga and the family.

Mark Sapir's death is a great loss. He was an insightful and very intense researcher. At the same time he had a great sense of humor. I had the good fortune to be able to work with him in the late 1990s, and it was an impressive experience. In this work, Mark eventually invented the S-machine, which is a crucial bridging tool between nondeterministic Turing machines and finite presentations of groups. I am sorry that Mark is gone. My condolences to Olga and their children.

It is very sad to learn about Mark Sapir's death. Although my acquaintance with him was tangential, he made a strong impression, both personally and professionally. I learned much from his course in geometric group theory, and his "good job" recording sets up a high standard in pedagogical thought at Vanderbilt.

I believe I saw him on campus about half a year ago, trying to walk with help from Olga, and thought that he was recovering... My condolences to the family.

Mark Sapir's demise is a great loss for his colleagues and friends, for Algebra, and, in particular, for theories of groups and semigroups. I was able to apprise Mark's mathematical talent about 40 years ago when I was reading his Ph.D. thesis, being Sapir's 'official opponent'. I was surprised that the tripling of a semigroup S (when the factors x,y and the product xy were taken from different copies of S) could be a very useful research trick. Later we were amazed at Mark's inventions many times. His S-machines have already  been used in mathematical works and will be exploited many times and fully 
appreciated in future.

Mark Sapir was a mathematician to the very core, and he had never been tired of mathematics.
Mark was ready to speak of any problems, from the most modern problems to high school olympiad ones. It seemed to me sometimes that he was not very interested in those undergraduate students who had enrolled to his course just by necessity, to fulfil the requirements. But he completely changed during
seminars in geometric group theory lead by him as long as his health permitted. His questions and advices encouraged dozens speakers.

A significant part of my life is connected to Vanderbilt University, where 19 research papers were written with Mark Sapir, and the last one is still in press. Apart from mathematics we talked about everything, and right now I am just recollecting some Mark's jokes about marxism-leninism that we used to study at Soviet universities. Laughing he was able to cite excerpts from those most published in USSR books.

Mark Sapir much influenced my move to Vanderbilt in 1999. Among many other things, I am grateful to him and Olga for a month spent in their hospitable home in Spring 1998 when I was visiting VU. Communication with Mark will forever remain in my memory and in the memory of many my colleagues.

Mark Sapir was a respected mathematician worldwide. But for me, he was a colleague and a friend. His office was next door to mine and I enjoyed  his good sense of humor. He was an exceptional person who was not afraid of speaking his mind and standing by his beliefs. I will miss him.


I first saw Mark Sapir in 1972, when he entered the first year of the Ural State University, and I was in my second year. I was struck by the stamp of noble intellect on the face of this young man.
At scientific seminars at the University, where Mark participated, one could feel the aura of high tension created by him together with two or three other prominent participants.
In the future, in Yekaterinburg, and in Israel, and in America, it was always a pleasure to talk with Mark, he was invariably benevolent and witty. Mark and Olga provided me with invaluable help during a difficult period of my life, I am so grateful to this wonderful family! I know that they helped many Soviet mathematicians in exile. I want to note that Mark was not only a genious mathematician, but also a very brave, kind and generous person. He had great willpower and was a real hero in life! Peace and rest to the bright soul of Mark Sapir, and in the future - joyful work!

Bella Rozenblat
friend
I first saw Mark Sapir in 1972, when he entered the first year of the Ural State University, and I was in my second year. I was struck by the stamp of noble intellect on the face of this young man.
At scientific seminars at the University, where Mark participated, one could feel the aura of high tension created by him together with two or three other prominent participants.
In the future, in Yekaterinburg, and in Israel, and in America, it was always a pleasure to talk with Mark, he was invariably benevolent and witty. Mark and Olga provided me with invaluable help during a difficult period of my life, I am so grateful to this wonderful family! I know that they helped many Soviet mathematicians in exile. I want to note that Mark was not only a genious mathematician, but also a very brave, kind and generous person. He had great willpower and was a real hero in life! Peace and rest to the bright soul of Mark Sapir, and in the future - joyful work!

Mark was remarkable man, gaining the highest respect among his colleagues in the US and the world. I was fortunate to work with him at the University of Nebraska. There I learned his stellar career in mathematics was only a fraction of his life. He was a man of iron will who succeeded in every life direction that he sought: creating with Olga a loving family with three great kids; developing a business of educational computer games when teaching math to little kids was unknown in the US; and even bicycling long distances to the UNL campus before bike trails were plentiful and in vogue in Lincoln. He was great human being, good friend, and fabulous teacher. Mark’s memory will live with us

My deepest condolences to Mark's family. Mark's death is a big loss for all of us, he played an important role in the group-theory community, through his books, articles and conversations. I do not remember when have I met Mark for the first time: I never met him in USSR (while geographically somewhat close, by Siberian standards, we belonged to different mathematical communities: I never thought of myself as an algebraist back then). In the US, I stayed in Mark's  house in late 1990s, when I was giving a seminar talk in Vanderbilt, and where I got a chance to meet Mark's family. Later on, I met Mark numerous times at various conferences and even co-wrote an  appendix to one of Mark's papers. One thing that I found striking about Mark is how funny and cheerful he always was, even in the face of adversity.   

 Mark was one of a small group of brilliant young mathematicians from Lev Shevrin's algebraic systems seminar in Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg) whom I met at a semigroups conference in Szeged in the 1980's. I began a correspondence with him that led to a wonderful collaboration and several joint research papers: In fact I was very fortunate to have had Mark as a colleague  on the faculty at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for six years in the 1990's. Mark had a major impact on the intellectual life at Nebraska, not only through his brilliant research accomplishments, but also through his teaching and educational activities - for example he established a popular Saturday morning school for smart young children in Lincoln, based on the Roo and Robbie software package that he developed.

Mark's work has had a major impact in several areas of mathematics, including semigroup theory and geometric group theory. His passing is a great loss to the mathematical community and to his many friends and colleagues. 



I have known Mark since the beginning of his undergraduate studies, which is almost 50 years. Mark was a child prodigy, but unlike many less fortunate child prodigies,  he retained and deepened his remarkable abilities over the years. He was very hardworking (and demanded this from the people he worked with) and achieved a lot through this combination of enormous talent and great perseverance. He had his say in science (and did it his way). Mark's influence as a mathematician is immense and remains so.

On a personal level, I have many memories of Mark. I hope that I will have the opportunity to share some of them with his family, to whom I express my deepest condolences.

I first met Mark Sapir at a conference in Leningrad in the Spring of 1976. He was the only undergraduate among the invited speakers, and it was clear to me from the results presented in his talk that this young student is a rising star. Of course, that initial impression has been completely confirmed. 

For a number of years after that first meeting, Mark and I saw each other only occasionally. Our more close relationship started in January of 1991 when, at my invitation, Mark, Olga, and their little daughter, Jenya, moved from Russia to the United States, and Mark and I have become good friends. The breadth and depth of Mark’s knowledge and understanding of mathematics were truly remarkable, and he has made seminal contributions to several areas of algebra, especially, to semigroups and to geometric group theory. In addition, Mark had a rare ability of presenting the most difficult results in a very accessible form, and he was extremely generous in sharing his ideas with colleagues and students. 

On a personal level, I must add that our families were also very close. We had a number of joint trips, visited each other many times, especially, on holidays and for family celebrations. Mark had a great sense of humor, and we all had very good time together. He and I had enjoyed talking about literature and current events. Mark was an excellent ping-pong player and an avid cyclist. 

In the last months of his life, Mark and I often talked on the phone, and I know that his spirit was very strong to the very end. Mark’s passing is a deep personal loss for me. My wife, Faina, and I are sending our heartfelt condolences and warmest thoughts to Olga, Jenya, Yasha, Rachel, and the rest of Mark’s family.




To the Sapir family, 
I am sorry for your loss. 

Because of our new way of working due to the pandemic, my interactions with Mark were mostly through email.   But it was a privilege to work with him.

My deepest sympathy to the family.

AJ Smith
Department Administrator | Department of Mathematics | College of Arts & Science | Vanderbilt University 


Mark was a valuable member of our Mathematics Department. His contributions will endure and add to our future strength. He will be greatly missed by all our members.

Glenn Webb

Mark Sapir was a great inspiration for me. I took his courses on combinatorial group theory, where he explained his ideas on S-machines. I found his course to be truly remarkable. 

That aside, he was a great human being. He encouraged me always, and even had some discussions with me about sofic groups. In this context, he pointed me to the great Theorem of Rubin which had a great impact on my mathematical world-view. 

He was a man of service, kindness, bravery and truly unbelievable  insight.

I have many fond memories of talking mathematics with Mark.  He always approached math with an open mind and was quick to challenge me with a provocative conjecture.  It is a small comfort that he now knows if Thompson's group is amenable (and maybe even why or why not).

Mark was one of the most brilliant and inspiring mathematicians I have ever met. His premature departure is a great loss for mathematics but his work will surely continue to influence future generations through so many clear and deep writings.
I express my condolences particularly to his family.

Mark was my PhD advisor. I will always remember the first time I met him in his office and he introduced some of his work to me, as I was looking for an advisor at the time. As an advisor, he was always supportive and inspirational. And I especially appreciated him as there was a time he was hospitalised, but he still insisted that we met weekly to discuss math. So, we would Skype from time to time and I always saw him smiling from the hospital bed while we discussed. When I decided to go to Moscow, we discussed how the life would be in Russia, and he gave me many advices and told me numerous funny things. I wish I would have a chance to talk to him in Russian as I started to learn the language. I will remember his “Words of encouragement” forever, and I will miss him greatly. 


Dear Olga, 
My deepest condolences to you and the family.   I remember our happy years in the Ural State University, winter schools, our seminar, talking math. We collaborated with Mark in Ekaterinburg and then in North America. He was always full of energy and great ideas. May your happy memories give you peace and comfort during this challenging time.


My deep condolences with the  death of Mark to all his family. It's a very sad news for me and for many people who knew Mark. He was a great mathematician and very nice person. My numerous meetings with him at different conferences, at the Max-Planck Institute, his several visits to the University of Lille as well as  our previous life in Soviet Union made us very closed friends and colleagues. I'll remember you Mark ! 

I knew Mark starting from 2012, when I started my grad school at Vanderbilt. From the very first year Mark became one of my favorite people in the world of mathematics.  I deeply enjoyed my conversations with him both about mathematical and non-mathematical subjects, which could include anything from literature to chess. 

Mathematically, his influence on me can hardly be overestimated. My first systematic mathematical interactions with him started when I took his class on combinatorial algebra -- perhaps, one of the most influential classes that I ever took. Mark had a rare ability to convey the essential and beautiful in math and its intuition, often times by unearthing it from a thick layer of math formalism. 

In Spring of 2018, at around the same time, me and Mark had a surgical procedure. Mark would often write me and ask about how goes my recovery after the procedure. To the similar questions about his recovery, he would respond that he is doing well and that it wasn't  nearly as serious as my case, which I think was the other way around.  

My last conversations with Mark were about chess, which he was enthusiastically following during his last years. Mark will be greatly missed.

I first met Mark in 1997 and he was an inspiration to much of my work.  He was one of the greatest semigroup theorists of all times.  His brilliant usage of symbolic dynamics to characterize the inherently nonfinitely based finite semigroups is part of what convinced me that Semigroup Theory is a deep subject.  Mark was always very supportive to me and my career, even though his interest in semigroups lessened in his later years.  When I co-organized the Winter Canadian Mathematical Society meeting more than 15 years ago, Mark was one of the first people I thought to invite as a plenary speaker.   His book on Combinatorial Algebra is a classic, written with his unmistakable sense of humor.   I send all my warmest thoughts to Olga and the rest of the Sapir clan. 

I have known Mark for almost thirty years, since attending his seminar talk in New York, where I was a graduate student. Mark was a true and inspirational leader in geometric group theory. He brought many new and exciting ideas to the field and was always happy to share them with others. Mark was also a wonderful expositor of mathematics, both as a speaker and as a writer, with a rare ability to explain deep mathematical ideas in simple and accessible terms. He will be missed greatly.

Mark Sapir was my PhD supervisor.  He was kind and flexible- allowed lots of freedom in pursuing ideas that I found interesting, supplied useful feedback on work, made useful introductions to other mathematicians as well as letters of recommendation.

In addition to being a helpful adviser to me, Mark Sapir was an engaging and fun lecturer.  He is well-known for taking an elaborate argument and making it accessible to a general audience.   He was also able to go through lecture material with astonishing speed.  A fond memory is taking his winter semester algebra class.  He assigned every homework problem from A. Yu. Ol'shanskii's notes, and we finished the material three-quarters of the way through the semester.  He would often reassure us students with the reminder, "It is easy!"  His productivity in writing monographs and scores of papers, meeting organization, and journal editorship marked his distinguished career.

I will  especially remember the stoicism with which he faced challenges later in life.  When asked how he was doing, the closest to a complaint that I heard from him would be "not good".   May God's blessings and peace be with his family.

OBITUARIO

Mark Sapir

12 febrero, 1957 – 8 octubre, 2022

Marshall-Donnelly-Combs Funeral Home

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