"Without a breakthrough, we are doomed to a further lag"

Our first conversation with Dr. Fiz.-mat. Sciences, dean of the Faculty of Mathematics of the Higher School of Economics, professor of independent Moscow University, Sergei Lando, took place three years ago when the new faculty was created (see the Trv-hunger No. 17 of November 25, 2008, p. 4 ) [1], and now is the time to summarize some results. Talked by Natalia Demina. Read the full version of the interview on the website “Polit.ru” ( www.polit.ru/article/2011/09/27/math_in_hse ).

- What do you consider the main successes of the faculty over the past time? What happened? What has not happened yet?

- Oddly enough, our plans are mainly implemented. Two main components of a good faculty have been formed: a high -class team of teachers has developed, and good students come to us. The working conditions in the Higher School of Economics allow teachers working at full rate, not to spend considerable efforts on making money on the side, as a result of which they have time to research and communicate with students. Scientific life - seminars, special courses, conferences, trips - seething.

For the first three years, we gained an average of about 35 students, this year they came 48. Things are worse with a magistracy and graduate student. They were opened last year in the calculation of attracting graduates of other universities and so far have not yet unfolded in full force. With the growth of the faculty, there is more and more tightness: in one office there are four to five teachers, there are not always enough rooms for seminars.

Of course, I would like the faculty to be located in a convenient green campus, among other faculties of the university, so that each professor has their own office, and students have an independent classroom, so that students can sit on the grass during the break, having previously had a snack in one of the closest student cafes, and professors could discuss scientific problems over coffee coffee in a professor club. This is not and in the next 2-3 years is not expected. However, now students have a wide selection of various special courses, special seminars and scientific leaders.

- I know that many professional mathematicians came to the faculty. What, in your opinion, distinguishes teaching methods at the HSE mathematical faculty from the existing structures of mathematical education in Russia?

- The teaching staff of the faculty is one of our main achievements. That group of teachers who created the faculty set a very high bar of professionalism. So, of the 9 employees of the “first call” two - Viktor Anatolyevich Vasiliev and Boris Lvovich Feigin - made plenary reports at the International Mathematical Congress. This is perhaps the highest form of recognition by a professional international community. I have the feeling that the plank set then did not drop. Say, three employees received a PhD degree in Harvard: Mikhail Verbitsky and Leonid Posielsky joined the working from the faculty of the faculty of the faculty of the faculty .

Their level can be judged, for example, by the fact that M. Verbitsky in Caloric geometry was devoted to one of the recent reports at the Burgbaka seminar (in the traditions of this famous Parisian seminar with a 60-year history that gathers at the session twice a year, to hear reports on the most interesting recent results). At the same time, I note that we are conducting a competitive selection of new employees on scientific and pedagogical qualities, not paying special attention to what educational institution they graduated or where we defended the dissertation.

What is fundamentally important, among the new employees there are many young people - the age of 11 out of 23 associate professors does not exceed 35 years. This means that the personnel future of the faculty is also ensured.

A significant role in the replenishment of our teaching staff is played by close interaction with the leading Russian research center - the mathematical institute named after V.A. Steklova RAS. The institute agreed to education at the faculty of its basic department, which significantly expands the circle of research areas carried out by employees.

Educational activities are not closed to the staff of the faculty. During the last academic year alone, individual lectures were given to students such outstanding mathematicians as a professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbo-Ra Sergey Fomin, laureates of medals Fields Stanislav Smirnov and Vladimir Voevodsky, Andrei Agrachev. It was a great success, and not only our students, were used by mini-courses of the Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics University Kolam-biy (New York) Igor Moiseevich Krichever and professor of the University of California (UC IRVINE) Vladimir Baranovsky.

In 2010, HSE took part in the competition of the Ministry of Education and Science to invite leading professors to universities. As a result of the victory in this competition at the faculty, the Laboratory of Algebraic Geometry and its Appendixes under the leadership of the professor of the Mathematical Institute of the Kunta University of Fedor Alekseevich Bogomolov was created. This laboratory has a significant impact on the life of the faculty. Her Friday seminars collect algebraic geometers from all over Moscow with the active participation of our students and graduate students. In the summer, the laboratory spent two weeks of schools, at which guys from other regions of Russia joined our students. Only in September, two international conferences were held together with Mi AN. With a dozen of our students and graduate students - laboratory staff, their research activities receive material support. And all this is done in less than a year.

In the preparation of curricula, we focused primarily on the current state of mathematical science and on the experience acquired at independent Moscow University. Each teacher is a contributing researcher who knows which areas of mathematics and what approaches are used at the front line of research. This knowledge forms the principles of selection of the teached material and methods of its teaching.

The small size of the faculty makes it possible to individually work with each student. This approach not only ensures the inclusion of strong students in research, but also allows you to timely identify the difficulties that arise and help in overcoming them. We are trying to carry out the course work in the first year. In the 1-2 courses, these works are essential, on the 3-4th they include the results of their own research.

- How does the cooperation of the independent Moscow University and the Faculty of Higher School of Economics develop? 3 years ago, you talked about the fact that the creation of the faculty will not make NMU weaker, did it get conceived? Did you manage to make a single whole out of the old and new structure?

- We did not plan to turn an independent university and the HSE matfaces into a single whole. These are closely related, but completely independent organizations. After the creation of the faculty, the leadership of the Higher School of Economics supported a number of projects begun by an independent university, and these projects became joint. Among them is the Math in Moscow program, in which students from leading universities in North America come to Moscow, a semester to study mathematics. The courses that are read in English can also be attended and submitted by Mattaka students. This is the Moscow Mathematical Journal - the most cited from Russian periodic mathematical magazines. It is published in English.

At an independent university, the appearance of the matfaces affected the most positive way. For this, for another reason, for the second year, the first lectures in the independent have been experiencing an unprecedented influx to the people. The only large hall at the university, where lectures are given to freshmen, cannot accommodate all 250 people who wish, and the administration had to organize a television broadcast in the dining room.

Of course, as before, few can stand the double load for a long time, but in itself, the desire for so many youths to fill in the lack of mathematical knowledge cannot but rejoice.

- Are you satisfied with the level of applicants who come to the "tower"? Are there any problems with the set? Is the exam a convenient tool for choosing the best?

- In general, we are satisfied with the applicants we are recruited. A significant part of them are children with good preparation, configured for mathematics. Most of the others are also ready to make considerable efforts, and sometimes progress is very noticeable. As a result, we have a small screening. Yes, and he is compensated by the fact that strong students from other universities are transferred to the faculty, who learned from their comrades about the atmosphere that have developed, who want to get into it in order to feel modern mathematics.

In previous years, the selection at the faculty took place according to the results of the Olympiads, and in addition to the exam, we conducted our entrance exam. This exam served as a kind of barrier that allows applicants to navigate and understand whether their aspirations coincide with what awaits them at the faculty. His tasks (albeit simple, but unusual) demanded for his solution to a real understanding of school mathematics.

This year we did not have our entrance exam, but the Russian Council of Olympiads of schoolchildren increased the level of the mathematical Olympiad we conducted from the 3rd to the 2nd. This largely unleashed our hands, allowing only the results of really high -quality Olympiads. As a result, for the first year this year 33 winners and winners of various Olympiads were adopted, of which 8 are winners and winners of the All -Russian Olympiad in mathematics. We have no doubt that a strong core of impressive sizes is formed on the course, around which mathematical life will spin.

As for the exam, your formulation of the issue of choosing the best implies the situation of 40 years ago: many strong schoolchildren knock on the doors of the selection commissions of a large number of leading mathematical and natural science faculties of the country, waiting with the fidelity of the heart, and whether they are passing, and the commissions only remain to come up with a way to select the strongest and this way to use it. Now the situation is different: applicants are striving for faculties of economics, public administration and hotel facilities. So, 380 statements filed at our 50 budget places, we reacted calmly: it was initially clear that a significant part of these guys entered their statements to the selection committee only because it turned out to be along the road.

For us, an important factor is the desire of applicants to learn from us, and the exam is only a confirmation of the fact that they can study. All received the exam in mathematics more than 80, and the minimum amount of assessments for three exams (mathematics, Russian language and physics) is 243. At the same time, we are not threatened with an influx of applicants with unrighteously passed exams; It is difficult for me to imagine that a person who bought the result of the exam in mathematics, then voluntarily condemned himself to study mathematics for another 4 years. Of course, a month or two studies will adjust our ideas about freshmen, but so far we have high hopes for them. Decisions on the format for the next year are largely determined by comparing the academic successes of this and previous sets.

In general, the “qualifying” function of the exam worries me little. The influence of a single exam on school education is much more important, but it will be possible to judge the consequences of this influence only after a few years and only with the help of other forms of independent control.

To our obvious shortcomings, I would attribute a small number of nonsense among our students. So, this year, no more than a third of applicants were received from the Moscow Region. Apparently, this means that we have not yet found the channels of sufficiently effective dissemination of information about the faculty at the all -Russian level. But birth talents are not at all concentrated within the Garden Ring or even the Central Administrative District.

-If you look back 3 years ago, is it possible to say something about a change in the situation in mathematical education in Russia? Are there any progress for the better?

- It is difficult for me to judge school mathematical education as a whole: applicants who come to us and 40 years ago would satisfy the most demanding taste, but this is only a very small and far from random sample. But in higher education over the past year, significant shifts have been outlined that I would associate with ministerial grants. Three such mathematics grants (Smirnov Laboratory at the Matmekh of St. Petersburg University, the Laboratory of Dubrovin at the Mehmat of Moscow State University and the Laboratory of Bogomolov with us) have already noticeably changed the educational landscape. (Unfortunately, I know less about the Tre-Shchev laboratory in Izhevsk; possibly, given the scale of the city, its influence is even more noticeable.) School schools spent only by these laboratories already from half a dozen. In addition, their employees are not limited to participating in their schools, but give lectures and conduct classes in traditional summer schools organized by the Yaroslavl University, the Yekaterinburg University and the Institute of Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the University of Mining and Altai. If the financing of existing laboratories is continued outside the grants allocated to them until 2012, if other laboratories are formed in the same format, they will be able to give an impetus of mathematical education not only in their basic, but also in other universities.

At the same time, I do not see significant changes in the remuneration of teachers working in classical and technical universities, including federal and national research. If the conditions for those who receive and publish scientific results of a high level are not created in these universities, then there can be no question of any breakthrough, and without a breakthrough we are doomed to further lag.