Mathematics, applications of mathematics to life in general, and my life as a mathematician.
Results for gelfand
Before moving to the US, I attended the Gelfand seminar and took some pictures. I was a regular participant and have some bittersweet memories from that time. I’ve written about my experiences in several blog posts related to Gelfand, who was my advisor. The year was 1990, and I just acquired my first camera. I […]
This is my toast at the Gelfand’s Centennial Conference: I moved to the US twenty years ago, right after I got my Ph.D in mathematics under the supervision of Israel Gelfand. My first conversation with an American mathematician went like this: The guy asks me, “What do you do?” I say, “Mathematics.” “No, I mean […]
Israel Gelfand’s memorial is being held at Rutgers on December 6, 2009. I was invited as Gelfand’s student. My relationship with Gelfand was complicated: sometimes it was very painful and sometimes it was very rewarding. I was planning to attend the memorial to help me forget the pain and to acknowledge the good parts. I […]
Israel Gelfand was my scientific adviser from the time I was 15. This is the story of how Gelfand helped me, when at 20 I was an undergrad at Moscow State University. At that time, I was married to Sasha (Alexander) Goncharov, who was also Gelfand’s student. Sasha was more driven by mathematics than I. […]
“Follow your heart!” This is the most common advice for young people contemplating their future career path. This is not good advice. At some point in my life, the most popular aspiration among my friends’ children was to become opera singers. But the world only has room for a few opera singers. All of these […]
I used to be proud of my Russian math education. I am still proud of my high school one, but not so much of the one I received in college. In Soviet Russia, a student had to choose their major before applying to college. I wanted to study mathematics, and I got accepted to the […]
I grew up relatively poor, but I wasn’t aware of it and didn’t care. In 7th grade, I went to a new school for children gifted in math. Looking back, I realize that most of my classmates there were privileged. My first clue about my own financial disadvantages arrived when my math teacher, Inna Victorovna, […]
The year is 1994. The man on the left is my first husband, Alexander Goncharov. Although we were out of touch for a decade, when I married my third husband, Joseph Bernstein (on the right), Goncharov started visiting us. It wasn’t me he was interested in: he wanted to talk mathematics with my husband. I […]
I was afraid of my advisor Israel Gelfand. He used to place unrealistic demands on me. After each seminar he would ask his students to prove by the next week any open problems mentioned by the speaker. So I got used to ignoring his requests. He also had an idea that it is good to […]
Many years ago at Gelfand’s seminar in Moscow, USSR, someone pointed out a young girl and told me: “This is Natalia Grinberg. In her year in the math Olympiads, she was the best in the country. She is the next you.” We were never introduced to each other and our paths never crossed until very […]
