Talk:Nikolai Luzin

Untitled
Hi, I am a proper soviet mathematician that one can consider to have been raised under Kolmogorov's pedagogy (see his work on Olympiads and related methods of talent development in the USSR). I happened to stumble upon this page and founf that there are very few references, so I suggest everybody capable of reading cyrillic to point their browser here:

http://www.ihst.ru/projects/sohist/papers/dees99dl.htm

this is a very-very detailed discussion of Russian-Soviet mathematical society around 1930s, Luzin's case, the muppetts and the mupppet masters. Note that Dr. Alexandrov was never the starting point of the campaign, but was indeed used by the muppett masters to conduct attacks on Proff. Luzin. I'll try to contribute to this article by citing pieces from that article (translating to English, essentially) once i find a bit more time to do that. For now, keen researchers - go to the link above and God bless you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.114.249.100 (talk) 06:05, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

POV Issues
It seems to me that this passage is full of loaded language:

"The political offensive against Luzin was launched by not only Stalin's repressive ideological authorities but also a group of Luzin's students headed by Pavel Alexandrov...His students, participating in his political execution, never showed any remorse. The Luzin case was a prologue to the grim years of Stalin's repressions and political attacks on genetics, relativity, and other trains of free scientific thought."

Referring to the attacks as "political," Stalin's "ideological authorities," and the fact that his students "never showed remorse" all seem to indicate that the criticisms were groundless and that there should've been remorse. I don't know if that's true or not -- what evidence is there on the subject of these accusations and whether or not they were well-founded? If such evidence exists, it should be posted; if not, I'd suggest revising to something like "Some of Luzin's students were involved in accusing him of intellectual misconduct, etc." and leave it at that.

Also I think the whole passage about "the grim years of Stalin's repressions" needs to be cut. "Grim" isn't a neutral word: it's explicitly making a value judgment. I agree with the value judgment, but that's more or less irrelevant to the issue at hand. Pstinchcombe 07:33, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

The evidence of the political nature is given (i.e. excerpt from the editorial of the official party newspaper) and the links are indicated. The Luzin case was definitely political and some of his students were definitely involved. To describe the case as accusations of misconduct is far from neutral; it is a red herring that was invented by the students that showed no remorse about the political execution of their teacher even after thirty years after Stalin's and Luzib's death. These are facts.

I remove the POV dispute tag, as Pstinchcombe has not replied for months. I don't see the language "loaded", also the words are appropriate to the context and describe well the facts. However, I agree that maybe the article lacks the linking between sentences and references.161.116.80.71 11:59, 12 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I re-instated the POV tage for quite obvious reasons, most of which have been outlined above, by Pstinchcombe. I think the WP:STYLE should determine how to construct an entry about about historically established criminal acts or periods. The Gnome (talk) 13:56, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

A rejoinder to Hilbert?
John Stillwell in the American Math. Monthly(March 2002) quotes Luzin as follows from Comptes rendus Acad. Sci. Paris 180 (1925) p 1818:One does not know, and one will never know, whether the projection of the complement of an analytic set(supposed uncountable)has the cardinality of the continuum,...nor whether it is measurable. This sounds like a reply to Hilbert's Wir mussen wissen, wir werden wissen of 1900 although I've read from Leo Corry that he may not have said it then.(maybe it's other way around, it's Hilbert's reply to Luzin?) At any rate if we can find some info published that says one of these is a rejoinder to the other we could put it in the article and enrich the context.Rich (talk) 02:52, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

More mathematics
It would be helpful to include more information on the actual work of this first-rate mathematician, in addition to the non-scientific aspects already covered in some detail. Tkuvho (talk) 13:05, 15 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Luzin wrote a letter to Vygodsky discussing the latter's infinitesimal calculus textbook. There have been several recent articles dealing with this letter.  Would it be of interest to mention it here?  Tkuvho (talk) 12:52, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I have never heard about it. But why not? Sasha (talk) 16:21, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * it is interesting indeed. Sasha (talk) 15:47, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
 * It is a historically important letter. Karnan (talk) 17:23, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

The non-scientific aspects already covered in some detail
there is no need to expand them, but it would be nice to fix the errors. For example, the account of the 1929-30 events given at Dmitri Egorov is inconsistent with what is written here. What is correct? Sasha (talk) 15:44, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Egorov's and Luzin's trials were for different reasons. The students did not have much of a part in the former. Karnan (talk) 17:29, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Date of death
sorry, my edit summary did not fit into the line. this seems to be a reliable secondary source (at least, more reliable than the tertiary McTutor). Sasha (talk) 15:23, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

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