Prof.Dr. Hüseyin Ferruh Şemin
He was born in Istanbul on May 11, 1908. After attending Nişantaşı Sultanisi, he graduated from Istanbul Erkek Lisesi in 1927. Following one year of preparatory mathematics courses at Grenoble High School, he completed his undergraduate education at the University of Grenoble in 1933. On December 9, 1933, he began working as an associate professor at the Chair of Advanced Algebra and General Mathematics at the Faculty of Science, Istanbul University. Starting in 1935, he also served as an associate professor of descriptive geometry at the Higher School of Engineering. In 1944, under the joint supervision of Kerim Erim and Patrick du Val, he completed his doctoral thesis titled “On the Differential Geometry of Ruled Surfaces” with high distinction. That same year, his professorship at Istanbul University was approved by the Ministry of Education. In 1946, although Kerim Erim and Lütfi Biran were simultaneously working at Istanbul Technical University (ITU), Ferruh Şemin chose Istanbul University as his primary workplace.
He was among the founding members of the Turkish Mathematical Society, established in 1948. From May 1950 to February 1951, he was assigned to Stanford University for research, and between August 30 and September 6, 1950, he attended the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) at Harvard University as an observer. In 1952, he made significant contributions to the preparation of the proceedings booklet for the 8th Congress of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics held in Istanbul.
After 1954, he began reviewing articles for *Mathematical Reviews*, mostly in classical differential geometry and partly in general geometry, in German, French, and English. By 1978, he had reviewed a total of 111 articles. Also in 1954, he joined the editorial board of the *Journal of the Faculty of Science, Series A: Pure and Applied Mathematics* at Istanbul University, alongside guest professor Wilhelm Blaschke.
In 1954, he attended the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) held in Amsterdam, together with Cahit Arf and Nazım Terzioğlu. He gave a short presentation at the ICM congresses held in Edinburgh in 1958 and in Stockholm in 1962. In 1963, he participated in the meeting of the Italian Mathematical Society in Genoa.
Prof. Dr. Ferruh Şemin passed away in Istanbul on March 23, 1985. A funeral ceremony was held at the main building of Istanbul University on March 25, and he was laid to rest at Zincirlikuyu Cemetery.
*This biography was compiled by our board member Özkan Değer for the booklet “TMD 75 Yılın Ardından,” prepared on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Turkish Mathematical Society.