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Creative Discomfort: The Culture of the Gelfand Seminar at Moscow University

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Mathematical Cultures

Part of the book series: Trends in the History of Science ((TRENDSHISTORYSCIENCE))

Abstract

Israel Gelfand’s weekly seminar at Moscow State University, which ran continuously from 1943 to 1989, has gained a legendary status in the Russian mathematics community. It evokes a mixture of admiration and revulsion. Did the style of the seminar merely reflect the eccentric personality of its leader, or did it indicate some broader cultural patterns? Did the seminar thrive despite its offensive style, or was the style part of the enigma? How does today’s perspective of the memoirists differ from the contemporary perceptions of the seminar? To start answering these questions, we will place the Gelfand seminar in the social context of postwar Soviet mathematics.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Tikhomirov (2008), p. 10.

  2. 2.

    Interview with Aleksei Sosinskii, 20 October 2009 (http://polit.ru/article/2009/10/20/absossinsky_about_imgelfand/).

  3. 3.

    Tikhomirov (2008), p. 25.

  4. 4.

    Landis (2007), p. 69.

  5. 5.

    Arnold (2009), p. 40.

  6. 6.

    Gindikin (1993), p. xii.

  7. 7.

    Vershik (2012), p. 37.

  8. 8.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/science/08gelfand.html.

  9. 9.

    Nikita Nekrasov, “Not Exactly Crazy, Simply Beautiful,” (http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~rwilson/gelfand-memorial-nekrasov.pdf).

  10. 10.

    Shiriaev (2009), p. 101.

  11. 11.

    Landis (2007), p. 69.

  12. 12.

    Vladimir Retakh, “Ob Izraile Moiseeviche Gel’fande,” 21 December 2009 (http://www.mccme.ru/gelfand/retakh1.htm).

  13. 13.

    Arnold (2009), p. 40.

  14. 14.

    See Gerovitch (2013).

  15. 15.

    On the early years of the seminar, see Vishik and Shilov (1958).

  16. 16.

    The longterm seminar participant Mikhail Shubin took careful handwritten notes of the seminar proceedings for 25 years, 1964–1989. The Clay Mathematics Institute has made these notes available online (http://www.claymath.org/publications/notes-talks-imgelfand-seminar).

  17. 17.

    “I.M. Gelfand’s Publications—Extracted from Math Reviews” (http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~sontag/gelfand-publics.pdf).

  18. 18.

    When asked if an article fitted the subject of the journal, Gelfand reportedly replied, “A good article always fits the subject”; Kirillov (2003), p. 294.

  19. 19.

    See “‘Pis’mo 99’ v zashchitu A. S. Esenina-Vol’pina” (http://www.math.ru/history/p99/index.htm). The authorities suspected that Gelfand might be the initiator of the letter, and he feared an arrest; see recollections by Dmitry B. Fuchs (http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~rwilson/gelfand_fuchs.pdf). In fact, the letter was authored by the poet and dissident Iurii Aikhenval’d.

  20. 20.

    Garfield (1982).

  21. 21.

    Lax (2013), p. 47.

  22. 22.

    Retakh (2013), p. 26. For another version of this formula, ascribed to Gelfand, see Kirillov (2003), p. 293.

  23. 23.

    Anosov (2008), p. 101.

  24. 24.

    One participant put the seminar attendance at around 200; see Mikhail Verbitsky, Interview on Radio Liberty, 12 July 2005 (http://archive.svoboda.org/programs/tw/2005/tw.071205.asp); another claimed 200–300 participants; see “IPMU Interview with Maxim Kontsevich,” IPMU News, no. 4 (December 2008): 16.

  25. 25.

    According to Simon Gindikin, the official starting time was 6 pm; Gindikin (1993), p. xiii. Andrei Zelevinsky wrote that “the official starting time of the seminar was 7 pm (or was it 6:30?)”; Zelevinsky (2013), p. 48. Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro cautiously mentions “6 or 7 pm”; Piatetski-Shapiro (2007), p. 209. Aleksei Sossinskii quotes 7:15 pm; Interview with Aleksei Sosinskii. Robert MacPherson has remarked that the seminar formally started at 7 pm, but people began gathering around 6 pm, while Gelfand would actually start the seminar around 8 pm; Video interview with Robert D. MacPherson, 12 May 2011 (http://simonsfoundation.org/science_lives_video/robert-d-macpherson/).

  26. 26.

    Piatetski-Shapiro (2007), p. 209.

  27. 27.

    Zelevinsky (2013), p. 48.

  28. 28.

    “[I]ntentional”: Vasiliev (2008), p. 371 (on Gelfand’s biology seminar, which was run in a similar format); “on purpose”: Zelevinsky (2013), p. 48; “part of the scenario”: Gindikin (1993), p. xiii.

  29. 29.

    Aleksei Sosinskii calls it Mekhmat Club, referring to the Moscow University’s Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics; see Interview with Sosinskii. Many seminar participants, however, came from outside the university.

  30. 30.

    Video interview with MacPherson.

  31. 31.

    Ilya Zakharevich, interview by the author, Cambridge, Mass., May 19, 2012.

  32. 32.

    Interview with Sosinskii.

  33. 33.

    Rephrased from Vladimir Retakh, quoted in Kenneth Chang, “Israel Gelfand.”

  34. 34.

    Tikhomirov (2008), p. 10.

  35. 35.

    Piatetski-Shapiro (2007), p. 209.

  36. 36.

    Kazhdan (2013), p. 29.

  37. 37.

    Retakh, (2013), p. 25.

  38. 38.

    Gindikin (1993), p. xiii.

  39. 39.

    Landis (2007), p. 69.

  40. 40.

    Zelevinsky (2013), p. 48.

  41. 41.

    Denmark (1994), p. 593.

  42. 42.

    Tanya Khovanova, “The Designated Listener,” 19 November 2008 (http://blog.tanyakhovanova.com/?p=76).

  43. 43.

    Zelevinsky, quoted in Chang, “Israel Gelfand.”

  44. 44.

    Vershik (2012), p. 34.

  45. 45.

    Vasiliev (2008), p. 372.

  46. 46.

    Abelev (1995), p. 32.

  47. 47.

    Vorob’ev (2008), p. 375.

  48. 48.

    Skulachev (2008), p. 380.

  49. 49.

    One young seminar participant at one point was jokingly promoted from “furniture” to “participant” status; see E. B. Dynkin, “Gelfand’s impact at the beginning of my mathematical life (1940–1944),” 1 December 2009 (http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~rwilson/gelfand-memorial-dynkin.pdf). Gelfand used similar “furniture” terminology at his seminar on biology and medicine, which reproduced the style of his mathematical seminar; see Malinetskii (2004).

  50. 50.

    Tikhomirov (2008), p. 26.

  51. 51.

    Interview with Sosinskii. On another occasion, when a speaker stated a new result, Gelfand immediately called a graduate student to the blackboard and ordered to prove it, thus demonstrating that the result was rather trivial. “Should I feel offended? Of course, not,” philosophically remarked the speaker later; see Vershik (2012), p. 37.

  52. 52.

    Andrei V. Alekseevskii, quoted in “Matematik – tot, kto ponimaet,” Troitskii variant, no. 45 (19 January 2010): 4 (http://trv-science.ru/2010/01/19/matematik-tot-kto-ponimaet/).

  53. 53.

    Verbitsky, Interview on Radio Liberty.

  54. 54.

    An American colleague recalled, “Gelfand gave a long discourse … on Stanislavski. Apparently method acting was one of Gelfand’s many artistic interests”; Kostant (2013), p. 39.

  55. 55.

    Zelevinsky (2013), p. 48.

  56. 56.

    Gindikin (1993), p. xiii.

  57. 57.

    Gindikin (1993), p. xii.

  58. 58.

    Grigorii L. Rybnikov, quoted in “Matematik s bol’shoi bukvy,” Troitskii variant, no. 39 (13 October 2009): 10 (http://trv-science.ru/2009/10/13/matematik-s-bolshojj-bukvy/).

  59. 59.

    Zelevinsky (2013), p. 48.

  60. 60.

    The Russian term “kontrol’nyi slushatel’” is also often translated as “control listener” or “designated listener.”

  61. 61.

    Tanya Khovanova, “The Designated Listener,” 19 November 2008 (http://blog.tanyakhovanova.com/?p=76).

  62. 62.

    Gindikin (1993), p. xiii.

  63. 63.

    Vershik (2012), pp. 34–35.

  64. 64.

    Khovanova, “The Designated Listener.”

  65. 65.

    https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2006/10/categorified_gelfandnaimark_th.html.

  66. 66.

    Minlos (2007), p. 46.

  67. 67.

    Landis (2007), p. 69.

  68. 68.

    Vershik (2012), p. 37.

  69. 69.

    Pakhomov (2009), p. 54.

  70. 70.

    Khovanskii and Varchenko (2012), p. 393.

  71. 71.

    Givental (2012), p. 383.

  72. 72.

    Fuchs (2012), p. 484.

  73. 73.

    Ibid., p. 483.

  74. 74.

    Givental (2012), p. 383.

  75. 75.

    Ginzburg et al. (2002).

  76. 76.

    Vladimir Retakh, “Ob Izraile Moiseeviche Gel’fande.”

  77. 77.

    Vladimir Retakh, on his meeting with Aleksandr Kronrod; see Ibid.

  78. 78.

    Felix Berezin to Rem Khokhlov [1977], in Shifman, ed., Felix Berezin, pp. 238, 240.

  79. 79.

    Nikita Vvedenskaya, “Reminiscences of a Close Friend,” in Shifman (2007), p. 178.

  80. 80.

    Alexandre Kirillov, quoted in “Matematik s bol’shoi bukvy.”

  81. 81.

    Andrei Zelevinsky, quoted in “Matematik s bol’shoi bukvy.”

  82. 82.

    Video interview with MacPherson.

  83. 83.

    Frenkel (2013), p. 149.

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  1. Department of Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Massachusetts, USA

    Slava Gerovitch

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  1. Slava Gerovitch
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Correspondence to Slava Gerovitch .

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  1. School of Humanities, University of Hertfordshire, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom

    Brendan Larvor

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Gerovitch, S. (2016). Creative Discomfort: The Culture of the Gelfand Seminar at Moscow University. In: Larvor, B. (eds) Mathematical Cultures. Trends in the History of Science. Birkhäuser, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28582-5_4

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