Naming Infinity

A True Story of Religious Mysticism and Mathematical Creativity

256 pages

English language

Published 2009 by Harvard University Press.

ISBN:
978-0-674-05391-5
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In 1913, Russian imperial marines stormed an Orthodox monastery at Mt. Athos, Greece, to haul off monks engaged in a dangerously heretical practice known as Name Worshipping. Exiled to remote Russian outposts, the monks and their mystical movement went underground. Ultimately, they came across Russian intellectuals who embraced Name Worshipping―and who would achieve one of the biggest mathematical breakthroughs of the twentieth century, going beyond recent French achievements.

Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor take us on an exciting mathematical mystery tour as they unravel a bizarre tale of political struggles, psychological crises, sexual complexities, and ethical dilemmas. At the core of this book is the contest between French and Russian mathematicians who sought new answers to one of the oldest puzzles in math: the nature of infinity. The French school chased rationalist solutions. The Russian mathematicians, notably Dmitri Egorov and Nikolai Luzin―who founded the famous Moscow School of Mathematics―were inspired …

1 edition

Subjects

  • Set theory
  • Education, russia (federation)
  • Mysticism, soviet union
  • Mathematics, philosophy
  • Philosophy, french