Yesterday and Long Ago

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 world's 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.

First recollections. - The North-West direction. - Vera Stepanovna Arnold (Zhitkova). - First scientific recollections. - The Arnold family. - Home library. - The axiomatic method. - School years. - The color of a meridian. - It is difficult to keep a secret. - The temple of science. - The state exam on the principles of Marxism-Leninism. - Who did what. - Lavoisier and French mathematics during the Revolution. - Queen Eleanor, Rosamund, and labyrinth theory. - Place des Vosges. - Chample Zee. - Neutrinos, neutrons, and Bruno Pontecorvo. - How to distinguish good from bad mathematical works. - Plutarch s combinatorics. - The topology of surfaces according to Alexander of Macedonia. - Hunting for snakes. - The guillotine and Marie-Antoinette. - The torments of Damiens. - Queen Margot and the kingdom of legality. - Joan of Arc a saint and a witch. - Ravaillac, French cuisine, and traffic jams. - Anna Yaroslavna. - Gennady of Novgorod and education of youth under Ivan III. - Catherine I and the Prut campaign. - Catherine II and I. I. Betskoy. - The Crimean war. - Dashkova and parachutes. - Profanation of a sacred object and abstract algebra. - Caesar and Gauls: the defence of Rome from the Germans. - France Guinea India. - Tamil tigers in the Swiss Consulate in Paris. - The planning department. - Mountain lions over Stanford. - Hong Kong. - Brazil trips. - Leibniz as a precursor of Bourbaki. - The origin of mathematics: the route from Egypt to Greece. - The motivation for teaching mathematics in Israel. - The struggle with foreigners and their languages. - Our Manchuria . - From the history of the French economy. - Ramanujan and Hardy. - Picking up cranberries. - Tomography of the brain, geometry, and algebra. - Inedible hares. - How Academicians were elected and how they were eliminated. - Weierstrass andSophia Kovalevskaya. - Radischev. - Mandate ( Nakaz ) of Catherine II. - Religion and science, Luther and anti-Semitism. - Galileo. - Mistral in the Crown . - Abel s theory and modern mathematics. - From Pareto to Arzamas. - Whether the Moon will fall onto the Earth or not? . - The pike of Cambridge. - Pon goma river and Solovki. - The Suputinsky nature reserve. - The Yamal peninsula and grubbing snow caves. - The Pocha river and a dog named Shnura. - Aksin ino cemetery.