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Naming Infinity: a True Story of Religious Mysticism And
Naming Infinity Naming Infinity A True Story of Religious Mysticism and Mathematical Creativity Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, En gland 2009 Copyright © 2009 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Graham, Loren R. Naming infinity : a true story of religious mysticism and mathematical creativity / Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor. â p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-674-03293-4 (alk. paper) 1. Mathematics—Russia (Federation)—Religious aspects. 2. Mysticism—Russia (Federation) 3. Mathematics—Russia (Federation)—Philosophy. 4. Mathematics—France—Religious aspects. 5. Mathematics—France—Philosophy. 6. Set theory. I. Kantor, Jean-Michel. II. Title. QA27.R8G73 2009 510.947′0904—dc22â 2008041334 CONTENTS Introduction 1 1. Storming a Monastery 7 2. A Crisis in Mathematics 19 3. The French Trio: Borel, Lebesgue, Baire 33 4. The Russian Trio: Egorov, Luzin, Florensky 66 5. Russian Mathematics and Mysticism 91 6. The Legendary Lusitania 101 7. Fates of the Russian Trio 125 8. Lusitania and After 162 9. The Human in Mathematics, Then and Now 188 Appendix: Luzin’s Personal Archives 205 Notes 212 Acknowledgments 228 Index 231 ILLUSTRATIONS Framed photos of Dmitri Egorov and Pavel Florensky. Photographed by Loren Graham in the basement of the Church of St. Tatiana the Martyr, 2004. 4 Monastery of St. Pantaleimon, Mt. Athos, Greece. 8 Larger and larger circles with segment approaching straight line, as suggested by Nicholas of Cusa. 25 Cantor ternary set. -
Biography of N. N. Luzin
BIOGRAPHY OF N. N. LUZIN http://theor.jinr.ru/~kuzemsky/Luzinbio.html BIOGRAPHY OF N. N. LUZIN (1883-1950) born December 09, 1883, Irkutsk, Russia. died January 28, 1950, Moscow, Russia. Biographic Data of N. N. Luzin: Nikolai Nikolaevich Luzin (also spelled Lusin; Russian: НиколайНиколаевич Лузин) was a Soviet/Russian mathematician known for his work in descriptive set theory and aspects of mathematical analysis with strong connections to point-set topology. He was the co-founder of "Luzitania" (together with professor Dimitrii Egorov), a close group of young Moscow mathematicians of the first half of the 1920s. This group consisted of the higly talented and enthusiastic members which form later the core of the famous Moscow school of mathematics. They adopted his set-theoretic orientation, and went on to apply it in other areas of mathematics. Luzin started studying mathematics in 1901 at Moscow University, where his advisor was professor Dimitrii Egorov (1869-1931). Professor Dimitrii Fedorovihch Egorov was a great scientist and talented teacher; in addition he was a person of very high moral principles. He was a Russian and Soviet mathematician known for significant contributions to the areas of differential geometry and mathematical analysis. Egorov was devoted and openly practicized member of Russian Orthodox Church and active parish worker. This activity was the reason of his conflicts with Soviet authorities after 1917 and finally led him to arrest and exile to Kazan (1930) where he died from heavy cancer. From 1910 to 1914 Luzin studied at Gottingen, where he was influenced by Edmund Landau. He then returned to Moscow and received his Ph.D. -
Mathematical Symbolism in a Russian Literary Masterpiece
MATHEMATICAL SYMBOLISM IN A RUSSIAN LITERARY MASTERPIECE NOAH GIANSIRACUSA∗ AND ANASTASIA VASILYEVA∗∗ ABSTRACT. Andrei Bely’s modernist novel Petersburg, first published in 1913, is considered a pinnacle of the Symbolist movement. Nabokov famously ranked it as one of the four greatest mas- terpieces of 20th-century prose. The author’s father, Bugaev, was an influential mathematician and for 12 years served as the president of the Moscow Mathematical Society; he was also a source of inspiration for one of the main characters in the son’s novel. While the philosophical views and po- litical leanings of the mathematicians surrounding Bely, and their impact on Petersburg, have been a topic of recent academic interest, there has not yet been a direct investigation of the surprisingly fre- quent and sophisticated mathematical passages in the book itself. We attempt here to rectify this gap in the scholarly literature, and in doing so find a rich tapestry of mathematical ideas and allusions. 1. INTRODUCTION Andrei Bely (1880-1934) was a fascinating, if somewhat tragic, figure. He grew up under the stern tutelage of his internationally renowned math professor father, Nikolai Bugaev (1837-1903), and studied the natural sciences at the University of Moscow before turning to the literary arts. In fact, it was because of the father’s fame and reputation that Bely took up a pseudonym when launching his literary career, rather than publishing under his birth name, Boris Bugaev [Moc77, p. 31]. Both father and son were polymaths with vast philosophical interests. They seemed intent on expanding the theoretical foundations of their respective subjects (math for the father, poetry and prose for the son) to quixotic extents: they believed they could explain, and even justify, historical events and contemporary social movements through their abstract work. -
University Press Amsterdam University Press in De Naam Van Oneindigheid
In de naam van oneindigheid Amsterdam University Press Amsterdam University Press In de naam van oneindigheid Een waargebeurd verhaal over religieus mysticisme en wiskundige creativiteit Loren Graham & Jean-Michel Kantor Vertaling Lukas M. Verburgt AUP Amsterdam University Press Oorspronkelij k verschenen als: Loren Graham & Jean-Michel Kantor Naming Infijinity. A True Story of Religious Mysticism and Mathematical Creativity. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England, 2009. © 2009 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College Published by arrangement with Harvard University Press Vertaling: Lukas M. Verburgt Afbeelding omslag: Michail Vasilevitsj Nesterov, De fijilosofen. Sergej Nikolajevitsj Boelgakov en Pavel Florenski, 1917. © Russisch Staatsmuseum, St. Petersburg, Rusland / The Bridgeman Art Library Ontwerp binnenwerk: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6298 317 5 e-isbn 978 90 4853 309 1 (pdf) e-isbn 978 90 4853 310 7 (ePub) nur 685 ǀ 708 © L. Graham, J-M. Kantor / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2016 Alle rechten voorbehouden. Niets uit deze uitgave mag worden verveelvoudigd, opgeslagen in een geautomatiseerd gegevensbestand, of openbaar gemaakt, in enige vorm of op enige wij ze, hetzij elektronisch, mechanisch, door fotoko- pieën, opnamen of enige andere manier, zonder voorafgaande schriftelij ke toestemming van de uitgever. Voor zover het maken van kopieën uit deze uitgave is toegestaan op grond van artikel 16B Auteurswet 1912 jº het Besluit van 20 juni 1974, Stb. 351, zoals gewij zigd bij het Besluit van 23 augustus 1985, Stb. 471 en artikel 17 Auteurswet 1912, dient men de daarvoor wettelij k verschuldigde vergoedingen te voldoen aan de Stichting Reprorecht (Postbus 3051, 2130 KB Hoofddorp). -
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Martin Heidegger John Dewey Karl Marx
T hales Xenophanes Heraclitus Donaldson Brown Leucippus Anaximander Parmenides Anaxagoras Peter Drucker Democritus Pythagoras Protagoras Zeno of Elea Socrates Isaiah Epicurus Plato Hippocrates Aeschylus Pericles Antisthenes Jeremiah Aristotle Zeno of Citium Herophilos Marsilio Ficino T hucydides Sophocles Zoroaster Jesus Gautama Buddha Roger Bacon Alexander the Great Ammonius Saccas Erasistratus Euripides Paul of T arsus Mani Nagarjuna Ashoka Plotinus Al-Farabi Origen Galen Aristophanes Asclepiades of Bithynia Constantine I Albertus Magnus Augustine of Hippo Lucretius Cleanthes Avicenna Muhammad Martin Luther Johannes Scotus Eriugena Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius Chrysippus Virgil Averroes Fakhr al-Din al-Razi Lorenzo de' Medici Desiderius Erasmus Sextus Empiricus Porphyry Anselm of Canterbury Henry of Ghent T homas Aquinas Cicero Seneca the Younger Horace Ovid Ibn Khaldun Giovanni Pico della Mirandola Menander Donatello T homas More Duns Scotus Lorenzo Valla Michel de Montaigne Petrarch Geoffrey Chaucer Poliziano Plutarch T homas Kyd Christopher Marlowe Girolamo Benivieni T erence Girolamo Savonarola Plautus Pierre Corneille Jean Racine William of Ockham William Shakespeare Moliere Hugo Grotius Francis Bacon Rene Descartes Ptolemy Euclid Al-Karaji Ben Jonson Alfred T ennyson, 1st Baron T ennyson T homas Hardy Homer Karen Blixen Paul Scarron T homas Hobbes Robert Boyle Abd Al-Rahman Al Sufi Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi Nicolaus Copernicus T itian Blaise Pascal Dante Alighieri Peter Hoeg Baruch Spinoza Galileo Galilei Marin Mersenne -
Pursuing the Infinite the Mathematicians and the Heretical Sect Is Not in Doubt
NATURE|Vol 458|23 April 2009 OPINION population are sustained for the rest of this the best we can hope is that we can manage that some infinite sets were larger than others. century, but at a huge cost — the complete them ourselves, taking over the heavy respon- A group of French mathematicians at the turn loss of all the natural ecosystems of the world. sibility for keeping Earth habitable, which Gaia of the century — including Emile Borel, Henri Most of us, living in cities and insulated from once did for us automatically. Lebesgue and René Baire — were searching the natural environment, would barely notice The more likely outcome is that we would for a systematic way to determine the size of until it was too late to do anything about it. barely manage them at all. In that case, we these infinite sets. This aroused the scepticism This is what many politicians, economists and would face a sequence of global environmental of colleagues such as Henri Poincaré, who industrialists seem to want — their mantra of crises and a steady degradation of the planetary claimed that Cantor’s hierarchy of infinities unceasing economic growth implies that we environment that would eventually kill just as had “a whiff of form without matter, which should take for ourselves all Gaia’s resources many of us as a sudden collapse. Given that, is repugnant to the French spirit”. According and squeeze from them the maximum short- perhaps we had better hope that Lovelock is to the authors, the French researchers found term gain, leaving nothing for the future. -
Tales of Our Forefathers
Introduction Family Matters Educational Follies Tales of Our Forefathers Underappreciated Mathematics Death of a Barry Simon Mathematician Mathematics and Theoretical Physics California Institute of Technology Pasadena, CA, U.S.A. but it is a talk for mathematicians. It is dedicated to the notion that it would be good that our students realize that while Hahn–Banach refers to two mathematicians, Mittag-Leffler refers to one. Introduction This is not a mathematics talk Introduction Family Matters Educational Follies Underappreciated Mathematics Death of a Mathematician It is dedicated to the notion that it would be good that our students realize that while Hahn–Banach refers to two mathematicians, Mittag-Leffler refers to one. Introduction This is not a mathematics talk but it is a talk for mathematicians. Introduction Family Matters Educational Follies Underappreciated Mathematics Death of a Mathematician Mittag-Leffler refers to one. Introduction This is not a mathematics talk but it is a talk for mathematicians. It is dedicated to the notion that it would Introduction be good that our students realize that while Hahn–Banach Family Matters refers to two mathematicians, Educational Follies Underappreciated Mathematics Death of a Mathematician Introduction This is not a mathematics talk but it is a talk for mathematicians. It is dedicated to the notion that it would Introduction be good that our students realize that while Hahn–Banach Family Matters refers to two mathematicians, Educational Follies Underappreciated Mathematics Death of a Mathematician Mittag-Leffler refers to one. In the early 1980s, Mike Reed visited the Courant Institute and, at tea, Peter Lax took him over to a student who Lax knew was a big fan of Reed–Simon. -
Naming Infinity: a True Story of Religious Mysticism And
Naming Infinity Naming Infinity A True Story of Religious Mysticism and Mathematical Creativity Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, En gland 2009 Copyright © 2009 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Graham, Loren R. Naming infinity : a true story of religious mysticism and mathematical creativity / Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor. â p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-674-03293-4 (alk. paper) 1. Mathematics—Russia (Federation)—Religious aspects. 2. Mysticism—Russia (Federation) 3. Mathematics—Russia (Federation)—Philosophy. 4. Mathematics—France—Religious aspects. 5. Mathematics—France—Philosophy. 6. Set theory. I. Kantor, Jean-Michel. II. Title. QA27.R8G73 2009 510.947′0904—dc22â 2008041334 CONTENTS Introduction 1 1. Storming a Monastery 7 2. A Crisis in Mathematics 19 3. The French Trio: Borel, Lebesgue, Baire 33 4. The Russian Trio: Egorov, Luzin, Florensky 66 5. Russian Mathematics and Mysticism 91 6. The Legendary Lusitania 101 7. Fates of the Russian Trio 125 8. Lusitania and After 162 9. The Human in Mathematics, Then and Now 188 Appendix: Luzin’s Personal Archives 205 Notes 212 Acknowledgments 228 Index 231 ILLUSTRATIONS Framed photos of Dmitri Egorov and Pavel Florensky. Photographed by Loren Graham in the basement of the Church of St. Tatiana the Martyr, 2004. 4 Monastery of St. Pantaleimon, Mt. Athos, Greece. 8 Larger and larger circles with segment approaching straight line, as suggested by Nicholas of Cusa. 25 Cantor ternary set. -
Under the Protection of Alien Wings. Mathematicians in the Russian Emigration in Inter War France Laurent Mazliak, Thomas Perfettini
Under the protection of alien wings. Mathematicians in the Russian emigration in inter war France Laurent Mazliak, Thomas Perfettini To cite this version: Laurent Mazliak, Thomas Perfettini. Under the protection of alien wings. Mathematicians in the Russian emigration in inter war France. 2019. hal-02280296v2 HAL Id: hal-02280296 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02280296v2 Preprint submitted on 18 Sep 2019 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Under the protection of alien wings Mathematicians in the Russian emigration in inter war France: A general picture and two case studies of Ervand Kogbetliantz and Vladimir Kosticyn 1 Laurent Mazliak and Thomas Perfettini INTRODUCTION ‘To emigrate is to commit suicide while counting on the arrival of the ambulance,’ said the Russian dissident Dimitri Petrovitch Savitsky (1944-2019) after arriving in France in the 1980s. What indeed strikes first in the phenomenon of emigration is the renunciation, the tearing away from a familiar environment, the one in which one has lived the first years of one's life, or even sometimes almost all one's life when the emigration process occurs late. But even when this emigration was unavoidable because violent outbursts had physically threatened the exiles and forced them to a more or less precipitate departure, one is surprised to observe that the country of origin often keeps a protective aspect. -
Programming the USSR: Leonid V. Kantorovich in Context
BJHS 53(2): 255–278, June 2020. © The Author(s) 2020. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. doi:10.1017/S0007087420000059 First published online 08 April 2020 Programming the USSR: Leonid V. Kantorovich in context IVAN BOLDYREV* AND TILL DÜPPE** Abstract. In the wake of Stalin’s death, many Soviet scientists saw the opportunity to promote their methods as tools for the engineering of economic prosperity in the socialist state. The mathematician Leonid Kantorovich (1912–1986) was a key activist in academic politics that led to the increasing acceptance of what emerged as a new scientific persona in the Soviet Union. Rather than thinking of his work in terms of success or failure, we propose to see his career as exemplifying a distinct form of scholarship, as a partisan technocrat, characteristic of the Soviet system of knowledge production. Confronting the class of orthodox economists, many factors were at work, including Kantorovich’s cautious character and his allies in the Academy of Sciences. Drawing on archival and oral sources, we demonstrate how Kantorovich, throughout his career, negotiated the relations between mathematics and eco- nomics, reinterpreted political and ideological frames, and reshaped the balance of power in the Soviet academic landscape. In the service of plenty One of the driving forces of Western science in the twentieth century was the notion of promoting rationality in modern societies. -
Measure, Integration & Real Analysis
Graduate Texts in Mathematics Sheldon Axler Measure, Integration & Real Analysis Graduate Texts in Mathematics 282 Graduate Texts in Mathematics Series Editors Sheldon Axler San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, USA Kenneth Ribet University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA Advisory Board Alejandro Adem, University of British Columbia David Eisenbud, University of California, Berkeley & MSRI Brian C. Hall, University of Notre Dame Patricia Hersh, North Carolina State University J. F. Jardine, University of Western Ontario Jeffrey C. Lagarias, University of Michigan Ken Ono, Emory University Jeremy Quastel, University of Toronto Fadil Santosa, University of Minnesota Barry Simon, California Institute of Technology Ravi Vakil, Stanford University Steven H. Weintraub, Lehigh University Melanie Matchett Wood, University of California, Berkeley Graduate Texts in Mathematics bridge the gap between passive study and creative understanding, offering graduate-level introductions to advanced topics in mathematics. The volumes are carefully written as teaching aids and highlight characteristic features of the theory. Although these books are frequently used as textbooks in graduate courses, they are also suitable for individual study. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/136 Sheldon Axler Measure, Integration & Real Analysis Sheldon Axler Department of Mathematics San Francisco State University San Francisco, CA, USA ISSN 0072-5285 ISSN 2197-5612 (electronic) Graduate Texts in Mathematics ISBN 978-3-030-33142-9 -
Review of Naming Infinity: a True Story of Religious Mysticism and Mathematical Creativity Paul J
Review of Naming Infinity: A True Story of Religious Mysticism and Mathematical Creativity Paul J. Zwier, Calvin College Paul J. Zwier 1, Professor of Mathematics, Emeritus Calvin College NAMING INFINITY: A True Story of Religious Mysticism and Mathematical Creativity , by Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor, The Belnap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009, 227 pages, notes, hardcover, ISBN 978-0-674-03293-4, $25.95. Loren Graham is a specialist in the history of Russian science who has written many books and articles on the subject. One such book Science and Philosophy in the Soviet Union was a finalist for a National Book Award. One of his most recent books is Russian Religious Mystics and French Rationalists; 1900-1930. Jean-Michel Kantor is a French mathematician whose main interest is topology and is a popular writer on science. His web- site details his interest in the diffusion of science. ( I will use G-K for the book's authors.) Prelude As students of mathematics we invariably confront infinite sets. We learn about the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, ... , but, early on, we form the infinite set , {1, 2, 3, 4, ...} where we complete the formation of natural numbers in our minds and append the ellipsis with the symbol } to form the set, N, of all natural numbers . Continuing this process, we study and name the following infinite sets: the set Z of integers, the set Q of rational numbers, and in an explosive burst- to include the set A of all algebraic numbers, and the set of all transcendental numbers, T, finally arriving at the set of real numbers, R, so familiar to scientists today.