Yesterday and Long Ago

243 Pages·2006·8.04 MB·English

by  Vladimir I. Arnold

Translated by Leonora P. Kotova
Owen deLange
With 43 Figures
Vladimir I. Arnold
Steklov Mathematical Institute
ul. Gubkina 8
117966M oscow, Russia
e-mail:a [email protected]
Leonora P. Kotova and Owen L. deLange (translators)
PHASIS Publishing House: [email protected]
Originally published in Russian as "Istorii davnie i nedavnie"
by PHASIS, Moscow, Russia 2006 (ISBN 5-7036-0103-7 3rd edition)
http://mvw.phasis.ru.
Library Control Number: 2006933612
Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): 01-XX, 97-03
ISBN-10 3-540-28734-5 Springer Berlin Heidelberg New York
ISBN-13 978-3-540-28734-6 Springer Berlin Heidelberg New York
to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or
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The use names, trademarks, etc. in this
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on acid-free paper 210
Preface
History is not what we were wearing,
It is how we had been utterly ruined.
B. Pasternak.
In the of 1999 the police found me lying unconscious
with a broken forehead next to my bike in the outskirts of Paris,
and delivered me to a hospital. It took a few weeks for French
doctors to bring me to consciousness. But I did not recognize my
son and said about my wife: "this woman says that she is my
wife". A doctor asked me how many years we had been married.
I answered correctly, four'', and the doctor wrote down:
"arithmetical abilities are preserved".
Later, French doctors told me that with such a trauma any
Frenchman would succumb immediately. But then they added:
"Russians are very tough so you should live several months
more". In a Western textbook I had read effects of
the same applies to traumas.
after half a year I had not only survived but
The doctors found a scientific
case.
VI Pre(ace
The French doctors forbade me to do mathematics, or even to
write about it. But they allowed me to answer letters sent by my
friends. Many stories collected in this book originate from these
replies. I did not think about publishing these stories then because
I thought that I was about to die.
It turned out that for these letters I made rough notes (usually
I write without making drafts). And, when I came across them a
couple of years later, I realized that they could be interesting for
others to read. While preparing these notes for publication, it was
necessary to explain and make more exact some things, to write
down more. Also, several new stories were written. In this way
this book has come into existence.
* * *
After the first edition of this book had been issued, the lively
interest of my readers (including constructive critics) stimulated
me to introduce some clarity in old stories and to write new ones.
Ovidius gave advice: "if there is not even a speck of dust you
should shake it off carefully".
The author tried hard not to hurt anybody's feelings for
nothing. According to the Murphy law "to err is human, actually
only a computer confuses everything". And H. Heine recommends
"to forgive enemies, but only after they have been hanged". The
author used these recommendations and also the advice of many
other experts.
At the same time the publisher suggested the inclusion of
illustrations in the text and a name index. I have agreed and for
this purpose part of my archives at his The
name index was made M. Vyazigina (I edited it a bit), and I
am very to her for this
VAmold
1\!fosc011;D ecemba 2005
Contents
v
Preface .....
List of Illustrations XI
First recollections l
The North-West direction 2
Vera Stepanovna Arnold (Zhitkova) 4
First scientific recollections 9
The Arnold family . . 11
Home library 23
The axiomatic method 25
School years . . . . . 27
The color of a meridian . 30
It is difficult to keep a secret 31
The temple of science 34
The state exam on the principles of Marxism-Leninism 37
Who did what . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Lavoisier and French mathematics during the Revolution 40
Queen Eleanor, Rosamund, and labyrinth theory 43
Place des Vosges . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Chample Zee . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Neutrinos, neutrons, and Bruno Pontecorvo 54
How to distinguish good from bad mathematical works 57
Plutarch's combinatorics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
The topology of surfaces according to Alexander of Macedonia 61
Hunting for snakes . 62
The guillotine and !Vforie-Antoinette 63
The torments of Damiens 67
Queen and the of 68
Joan of Arc - a saint and a witch 70
Ravaillac, French cuisine, and traffic 73
VllI Contents
Anna Yaroslavna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Gennady of Novgorod and education of youth under Ivan III . 78
Catherine I and the Prut campaign 79
Catherine II and I. I. Betskoy 82
The Crimean war . . . . . 84
Dashkova and parachutes . . 85
Profanation of a sacred object and abstract algebra 87
Caesar and Gauls: the defence of Rome from the Germans 89
France - Guinea - India 90
Tamil tigers in the Swiss Consulate in Paris 91
The planning department . . 92
Mountain lions over Stanford 95
Hong Kong . . . . . . . . 97
Brazil trips . . . . . . . . 99
Leibniz as a precursor of Bourbaki 101
The origin of mathematics: the route from Egypt to Greece 104
The motivation for teaching mathematics in Israel . I 09
The struggle with foreigners and their languages 111
"Our Manchuria" . . . . . . . . . . I 12
From the history of the French economy 113
Ramanujan and Hardy . . . . . . . . 114
Picking up cranberries . . . . . . . . I 19
Tomography of the brain, geometry, and algebra 122
Inedible hares . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
How Academicians were elected and how they were eliminated 124
Weierstrass and Sophia Kovalevskaya 130
Radischev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 7
Mandate ("Nakaz") of Catherine II . . . . . 142
Religion and science, Luther and anti-Semitism 145
Galileo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
"Mistral" in the "Crown" . . . . . . . 154
Abel's theory and modern mathematics 158
From Pareto to Arzamas . . . . . 163
vVhether the Moon will fall onto the Earth or not'7 168
The of 172
173
nature reserve 176
Co11te11ts IX
The Yamal peninsula and grubbing snow caves 182
The Pocha river and a dog named Shnura 185
Aksin'ino cemetery 188
Name Index ............. . 191