Re: [Sci] An Interview with V. Arnold

["Nguyen Tien Zung" <tienzung@darboux.math.univ-montp2.fr>]

Hi all

Thanks ba'c Linh dda~ post ba\i na\y le^n. DDo.c ra^'t thu' vi.

Ba'c dda~ ho?i thi\ cu~ng xin ta'n va\i ca^u.

----------
> De : VU HOANG LINH <LINH@oplab.sztaki.hu>
> TITLE: An Interview with Vladimir Arnol'd

> Arnol'd: I was unaware of these differences for many years, but they do
exist.
> A few years ago, I was participating in an International Science
> Foundation (ISF) meeting in Washington, DC. This organization
> distributes grants to Russian scientists. One American participant
> suggested support for some Russian mathematician because ``he is
> working in a good American style.'' I was puzzled and asked for an
> explanation. ``Well,'' the American answered, ``it means that he is
> traveling a lot to present all his latest results at all our
> conferences and is personally known to all experts in the field.'' My
> opinion is that ISF should better support those who are working in the
> good Russian style, which is to sit at home working hard to prove
> fundamental theorems which will remain the cornerstones of mathematics
> forever!
> 

O+? LX cu~ co' cha Drinfeld chi? ngo^\i ly\ o+? Kharkov. Ngu+o+\i ta no'i
cha kho^ng chi.u ddi dda^u vi\ tie^'c tho+\i gio+\, cu+' 5 phu't la\ 1
ddi.nh ly',
kho^ng bie^'t ba^y gio+\ co' nhu'c nhi'ch ddi dda^u kho^ng?

> Russian salaries are (and were) so small, that if someone is doing
> mathematics, it means that for him it is the goal and not a means to earn
> money. 

But still he needs something to eat ?! Arnold himself is working in France
for that reason.

> My friend Vershik recently tried to obtain an American visa in Paris.
> ``What is your salary in St. Petersburg?'' asked the staff at the
> American consulate. After hearing his honest reply, the staff asked,
> ``Do you wish to persuade us that you intend to return to St.
> Petersburg at such a salary?'' Vershik answered, ``Of course. Money is
> not all!'' The staff was so shocked that Vershik was given the visa
> immediately.
> I was applying for a visa a week earlier, and they put me on a waiting
> list for three weeks. Their reasoning was that my papers must be
> checked in Washington since I am a ``donkey''. I asked for an
> explanation. ``Well,'' they replied, ``we have such names for every
> crime: dog, cat, tiger, camel, and so on.'' They showed me the list,
> and ``donkey'' is a pseudonym for a Russian scientist.

Ca'i na\y ddu'ng la('m. Nha\ gia\u thi\ nhi\n ngu+o+\i ba(\ng nu+?a con
ma('t ma\ la.i.
Dde^'n ca'c gia'o su+ co+~ bu+. cu~ng bi. coi khinh he^'t, tha^.t la\ qua'
dda'ng.

Ca'i na\y la\m to^i lie^n tu+o+?ng to+'i so^' mi\nh ra^'t hay bi. ga^y kho'
de^~ ve^\
visa, cha? qua chi? vi\ la\ ng\ VN. 1 la^\n la^u ro^\i xin visa o+? su+'
qua'n Canada dde^?
ddi ho^.i nghi. cu~ng bi. bo.n no' ho?i lu+o+ng ... ro^\i kho^ng cho visa. 
(Nhu+ng sau ddo' bo.n to^? chu+'c ho^. nghi. can thie^.p chu'ng no' la.i
cho)

> The Bourbaki manifesto containing these words was translated into
> Russian as ``all clear ideas were replaced by blind calculations.''
> The editor of the translation was Kolmogorov. His French was
> excellent. I was shocked to find such a mistake in the translation and
> discussed it with Kolmogorov. His answer was: I had not realized that
> something is wrong in the translation, since the translator described
> the Bourbaki style much better than the Bourbakists did.
> Unfortunately, Poincare left no school in France.

IMO, Bourbaki books are  not good for learning, but very good
as reference books.

> A typical example of the French narrow-mindedness is the recent
> discussion at the Academy of Sciences. Gromov was a foreign associate
> for many years, but he recently chose the French nationality and hence
> could no longer remain a foreign associate. The problem was to
> transfer him to be an ordinary fellow of the Academy. The French
> mathematicians, however, were opposed to this, saying that ``those
> places are for the really French people!'' In my opinion, all the
> ``really French'' candidates were incomparably below the level of
> Gromov, who is one of the world's leading mathematicians. In the end,
> Gromov is still not a fellow.

No comment. 

>It is awful to think what kind of 
> pressure the Bourbakists put on
> (evidently nonsilly) students to reduce them to formal machines! This
> kind of formalized education is completely useless for any practical
> problem and even dangerous, leading to Chernobyl-type events.
> Unfortunately, this plague of formal deduction is propagating in many
> countries, and the future of the mathematics infected by it is rather
> bleak.

I'm not sure if it is due only to the Bourbaki style. (Average students may
have
never read a single book by Bourbaki, and other textbooks are not that
formal).
But in my Univ. I see that many Maths students do not have any sense of
"natural thinking":
they can draw a straight line and then calculate its curvature to be a
positive number!
Maybe one of the reasons is that Univ. in France admit students without
qualification exams, and
most of good students prefer something more promising (in terms of money)
to maths. 
 
> The United States has a different danger. No Russian professor is able
> to solve correctly the problem they give in the Graduate Record
> Examination, the official entrance examination for graduate studies:
> find the closest pair to (angle, degree) among the pairs: (time,
> hour), (area, square inch), and (milk, quart). Every American
> immediately solves it correctly. The official explanation for the
> correct response (area, square inch) is: one degree is the minimal
> measure of angle, one square inch is the minimal measure of area,
> while an hour contains minutes and a quart contains two pints. I
> always wondered how it is possible for so many Americans to overcome
> such difficulties and become great mathematicians. One physicist in
> New York who solved the problem successfully told me that he had the
> correct model of the degree of stupidity of the authors of such
> problems.
> .....

I've heard about such complaints many times from many people. There must be
something to that!  

> By the way, I read in a recent American book that geometry is the art
> of making no mistakes in long calculations. I think that this is an
> underestimation of geometry.

I'm curious which book? Ne^'u sa'ch la' ca?i thi\ kho^ng ti'nh.

Z