Kolmogorov as I Remember Him
1991; Institute of Mathematical Statistics; Volume: 6; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1214/ss/1177011700
ISSN2168-8745
Autores Tópico(s)Diverse Historical and Scientific Studies
ResumoAndrei Nikolaevitch Kolmogorov was born in 1903 during a journey from the Crimea to his mother's home. He was the son of parents not formally married. His mother, Mariya Yakovlevna Kolmogorova, died in childbirth, and her son was adopted and brought up in the village of Tunoshna (near to Yaroslavl on the river Volga) by her sister, Vera Yakovlevna Kolmogorova. To her nephew Vera Yakovlevna gave the love of a mother, and Andrei Nikolaevitch responded with the love of a son. It is warming to be able to record that she lived until 1950, and so was able to witness some of his greatest achievements. Andrei Nikolaevitch is always known to us by the family name of his maternal grandfather Yakov Stepanovitch Kolmogorov, and it was in the Kolmogorov family home at Tunoshna that he spent his earliest years. During his childhood the family home housed a clandestine printing press, and family traditions record that compromising documents were sometimes hidden under his cradle. Of Kolmogorov's father, Nikolai Kataev, we know that he became a professionally trained agriculturalist, that he was exiled to Yaroslavl, that after the Revolution he became a department head in the Agriculture Ministry and that he perished on the southern front during the offensive by Denikin in 1919. Kolmogorov went to Moscow in 1920 as a student of mathematics, but he also attended lectures in metallurgy. In addition to this he took part in a seminar on Russian history, where he presented the results of his first piece of research, on Landholding in Novgorod in the 15th and 16th centuries. We are told how this was receiv.ed by his professor: You have supplied one proof of your thesis, and in mathematics this would perhaps suffice, but we historians prefer to have ten proofs. This anecdote is usually told as a joke, but to those who
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