Times are changing?

On December 31, 2013, 55 years old is mathematics and teacher, scientific employee of the IPPI RAS (Moscow) and LIRMM CNRS - laboratories of the National Center for Scientific Research of France (Montpellier) Alexander Khanievich Shenyu . We publish kind words addressed to him from another anniversary, good friend of our newspaper, G.N.S. In addition to the wounds of Anatoly Moiseevich Verhik , who turned 80 years old on December 28.

At the beginning of the 90s, I searched among my Moscow colleagues-mathematicians someone who would agree to write an article with me in any magazine read by specialists about admission to mathematical faculties of Moscow State University and Leningrad State University in the 70-80s, namely, on a focused, unceremonious and demonstrative detachment of a well-known part of the applicants.

It made sense to write about this, only the opera riting with specific data and facts. I did not know in detail Moscow specifics and therefore wanted to find those who knew it. There were many among the Moscow colleagues, but everyone I addressed, agreeing to what I should write, did not want to take.

And in 1993, at a conference dedicated to the 90th anniversary of A.N. Kolmogorova at the Euler Institute in St. Petersburg, I met Sasha Shena, who, as I knew, was dealing with this issue earlier. I invited him to write about this, and Sasha immediately agreed. We wrote an article in Mathematical Intellegenser [1], more precisely, I wrote the first (general) part, and in the second I described in detail the technology of admission and brought a series of tasks offered by the “chosen” applicants at the MSU MSU in those years, indicating the name of the examiners.

The publication gradually became widely known, it was reprinted [2]; There were many responses on the Internet. One mathematician even took up a detailed study of tasks and their origin [3]. The purpose of the publication, which, apparently, immediately understood Sasha, was not at all to “hold accountable”, but that as many people as possible knew about the anti-Semitic orientation to the leading universities, authorized directly by the top of the CPSU, and so that, remembering this, they would not allow repetitions. How many people are remembered now?

The true consequences of this cannibalist system are not only in many personal tragedies and among the talents lost to society, but in the fact that it (and, of course, other reasons) formed a steady rejection of the intelligentsia from the authorities, which, in the end, led that power to a complete collapse. Is there the same rejection (but for completely different reasons) now?

1. Admission to the Mathematics Faculty in Russia in the 1970s and 1980s. Math. Intell. 16, No. 4, 4-5 (1994). www.3038.org/press/vershik.pdf http://alexander-shen.narod.ru/vershik.pdf
2. You Failed Your Math Test, Comrade Einstein. Ed. M. Shifman. World Scientific 2005. Www.ftpi.umn.edu/shifman/comradeeinstein.pdf
3. Ilan Vardi. Mech-Mat Entrance Examinations Problem. In [2].
4. See interviews with A. Shen "I was not a student of Kolmogorov." TRV-hunger, No. 106, June 25, 2012. http://trv-science.ru/2012/06/25/uchenikom-kolmogorova-ya-ne-byl
5. Congratulations from N. Kaverin, S. Smirnova, A. Okunkova, V. Kaymanovich addressed to A.M. Read the top http://polit.ru/article/2013/12/28/vershik_80

Andrey Okunkov,
2006 Fields Prize Laureate:

Anatoly Moiseevich Vershik is such a tangle of mathematical and non -demotematic energy that cosmologists should include it in their models before comparing them with observations. I wish him not to slow down the pace, but to us, all the rest, I wish to keep up with him!

Stanislav Smirnov,
2010 Fields Prize Laureate:

I know Anatoly Moiseevich from his student years, and he always struck me with his wide horizons and real love for science. Perhaps he is one of the most versatile mathematicians in Russia. And without it, the mathematical life in St. Petersburg would undoubtedly be more boring - he charges everyone with his enthusiasm. I would like to wish Anatoly Moiseevich to continue to remain as energetic, and we all keep up with him!