Apology mathematics

On November 27, Vladimir Andreevich Uspensky, professor at Moscow State University and laureate of the 2010 Enlightenment Prize, turned 80 years old.

congratulated him on his blog : Alexander Arkhangelsky, a journalist and member of the organizing committee of the Enlightenment Prize,

— Today is the 80th anniversary of the outstanding mathematician, teacher and popularizer of science Vladimir Andreevich Uspensky. To whom - without any connection with the upcoming anniversary, without remembering it - the Enlightener jury just awarded a prize.

Happy birthday, dear Vladimir Andreevich! Have a long and prosperous summer!

http://arkhangelsky.livejournal.com/163591.html

We publish excerpts from some reviews of the book “Apology for Mathematics” that appeared on the Internet.

Lev Danilkin, “Afisha”:

Uspensky conveys several important thoughts: that mathematics is not just a set of formulas, but part of spiritual culture, that “mathematical ideas are capable of evoking emotions comparable to those caused by literary works, music, architecture,” that mathematics exists not only for benefit, but and for beauty, that mathematics has an ethical aspect and that mathematics “allows us to comprehend those properties that are discovered by other sciences. Moreover, it makes it possible to make more understandable some properties that are difficult to imagine; it explains how this can be” (for example, the finitude of the Universe). Drilling all this into the heads of those who were sick of mathematics at school is not easy, so Uspensky uses all the tools from the arsenal of a professional popularizer: he writes from “I”, appeals to his own experience, explains theorems without missing out on funny moments from the biography of mathematicians, savors not only facts, but also misconceptions, and when he has to choose between accuracy and clarity, he prefers the latter.

www.afisha.ru/book/1543/review/286302/

Mikhail Shiyanov, “Private Correspondent”:

Even if reorganizing your own thinking doesn't interest you, An Apology for Mathematics is still worth reading—even for fun. This book affects those centers of pleasure in the head of a person who actively despises integral calculus, like any “special” non-fiction. Like Stephen Hawking, who inscribed the concepts of astrophysics into the cultural context, Uspensky reintroduces us to the school concepts of “function,” “set,” and “relationship.” And they don’t look like textbook illegal migrants here. In the stories of a friendly interlocutor, the natural series of numbers is made almost a close relative of Malevich’s Suprematist constructions. Indeed, it is difficult not to be imbued with the calm royalty of cold numbers, recalling, together with the author of the Apology, at least Euclid’s Elements: “A point is something that has no parts. A line is length without width.”

www.chaskor.ru/article/um_v_poryadok_privodit_9874

Sergey Parkhomenko, “Around the World”:

The articles of the remarkable mathematician and popularizer of science, Professor Uspensky, balance on the brink of mathematics and the humanities, in particular philology. This is an extremely entertaining and unexpected read. “Apology for Mathematics” is an attempt to supplement the thinking person’s picture of the world with a very important fragment. People lose sight of this side of knowledge and this side of life. Mathematics has long seemed to most of us as something incomprehensible, something that a normal person should not even think about. Uspensky returns mathematics to the list of things accessible to every reasonable—and not lazy—person.

www.forbes.ru/node/31868/slideshow/2

In the photo:
V.A. Uspensky at the Summer School
"Modern Mathematics", 2009

Photo by S. Tretyakova from the website
www.mccme.ru/dubna/2009/thumb.html