27 June 2018
A 87-year-old man died in Moscow. Vladimir Uspensky — mathematician, linguist, popularizer of science. Poet.
The idea of the world as absurd is one of the legitimate and even necessary ways of understanding the world.
Born in Moscow in 1930, his father was a playwright.
He chose his profession "through a historical misunderstanding": like chess, mathematics was one of the few disciplines free of ideology in the USSR. Moreover, it promised success: Soviet mathematicians were already world leaders.
In 1943, at the age of 13, upon returning to Moscow from evacuation, he enrolled in a mathematics club at Moscow State University and began winning city Olympiads.
At the same time, he wrote poetry: at 15, he wrote five parodies of the fairy tale “Ryaba the Hen” in different styles – Homer, Kozma Prutkov, Balmont, Vertinsky and Mayakovsky.
Look, here's a chicken.
Surname: Ryaba.
Feathers of fabric
She sat down and strained,
looks confused:
sees: under it,
more golden than the sun,
There's no getting away from it: the fact is there –
There lies a golden egg!
(in the style of Mayakovsky)
In 1947, he entered the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics at Moscow State University. He studied under the eminent mathematician Andrey Kolmogorov.
As a 20-year-old student, he wrote a book, "Mathematical Conversations," based on the work of his school club. It was published by Gostekhizdat, a publishing house for serious mathematical literature.
Defended my PhD thesis.
I was interested in mathematical linguistics, but in the USSR this term was considered “bourgeois”.
In his works, he anticipated the development of computer science. He argued that mathematics is close to the humanities and that it is part of the spiritual world.
I would name three more crucial skills that mathematics classes should foster. The first is the ability to distinguish truth from falsehood; the second is the ability to distinguish meaning from nonsense; the third is the ability to distinguish the comprehensible from the incomprehensible.
Throughout his life he continued to experiment with language and write poetry.
In 1957, when everyone was talking about molecular genetics, he wrote a poem about DNA.
I disturbed the bacteria's peace:
I fed the bacteria with deenka.
I locked the door with a bolt,
The bacteria won't go away now.
For cruel treason,
For immoral nudity,
I will make a change of purines,
I'll change the code for you.
In 1960, at 30, he insisted on opening a new department of theoretical and applied linguistics at Moscow State University. Things were going sluggishly: only 13 people were accepted, and only five graduated.
At the same time, he published the book “Lectures on Computable Functions”, for which he received the degree of Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences.
The main problem with linguistics is that it's become fused with literary studies, like Siamese twins. What's destroying it?
In 1966, at 36, he became a professor at the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics at Moscow State University.
Mathematical truth does not depend on who proclaims it, an academic or a schoolchild; however, the academic may be wrong, and the schoolchild right. The further a science is from mathematics, the more humanistic it is, so to speak, the more the persuasiveness of a given statement depends on the authority of the one who makes it.
From 1993 until his death, he was the head of the Department of Mathematical Logic and Theory of Algorithms at the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics at Moscow State University. In the 2000s, he taught at summer linguistic schools.
The initiator of the reform of linguistic education in Russia, he introduced modern methods of mathematical logic into language learning.
He is the author of over 100 scientific papers. In 2010, he received the main prize of the Prosvetitel Prize for his book "Apology of Mathematics."
The role of mathematics in training humanities students can be compared to the role of drill in training a soldier. All those rifle regulations, turns, marching steps, and other movements taught to a young soldier are unlikely to be applied in real combat. But in armies around the world, they are considered a necessary foundation for any military training, as they teach the soldier to follow commands. Drill develops discipline—not discipline of thought, like mathematics, but discipline of action.