Yesterday and Long Ago [Paperback]

This is a charming collection of essays on life and science, by one of the leading mathematicians of our day. Vladimir Igorevich Arnold is renowned for his achievements in mathematics, and nearly as famous for his informal teaching style, and for the clarity and accessibility of his writing. The chapter headings convey Arnolds humor and restless imagination. A few examples: My first recollections; The combinatorics of Plutarch; The topology of surfaces according to Alexander of Macedon; Catching a pike in Cambridge. Yesterday and Long Ago offers a rare opportunity to appreciate the life and work of one of the worlds outstanding living mathematicians.

A charming memoir by a leading mathematician of our day. V.I. Arnold is renowned for achievements in mathematics, and for the clarity of his writing. These essays offer a glimpse into the life and work of one of the worlds outstanding living mathematicians.

History is not what we were wearing, It is how we had been utterly ruined. B.Pasternak.Spektorsky In the spring 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, twenty 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 regarding effects of poisons: as for alcohol the lethal dose for Russians is several times higher. Perhaps the same applies to traumas.Preface.- My first recollections.- The North-West direction.- Vera Stepanovna Arnold (n?e Zhitkova).- First scienlsª