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From: Boris Trakhtenbrot
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 14:28:04 +0300
Subject: Days
Dorogoy Nikolai Alexandrovich,
Shlyu serdechnyi privet i nailuchshie pozhelaniya po sluchayu
Vashego slavnogo Yubileya. S volneniem i teplotoy vspominayu
nashi vstrechi za poslednyuyu polovinu veka. Ochen' sozhaleyu,
chto ne mogu prisoedinit's'a k mnogochislennym kollegam,
druz'yam i uchenikam, kotorye soberuts'a v eti dni,
Zhelayu Vam nadolgo sokhranit' tvorceskiy dukh, legendarnyi
nauchnyi temperament. I prezde vsego - dobrogo zdorovya!
Kak znat', mozhet my s Vami eshcho tryakhnem starinoy, i vmeste
povtorim prekrasnye veloprogulki v Komarove!
Vsego dobrogo Vam i Vashey uvazhaemoy supruge.
Obnimayu Vas,
Boris Trakhtenbrot
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From: Department of Mathematical Logic and Applications. Sofia University
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 15:56:09 +0400
Subject: Greetings
Dear Nikolay Alexandrovich,
Happy Birthday to you and many happy returns! We wish you a long healthy and happy life and seeing a lot of favourable changes in the not so happy present reality in our countries. For us, you have been always an example of a honest and courageous man firmly following his viewpoint on the nature of Mathematics and Logic and the ways of their development. We remember with great pleasure your visits in Bulgaria, and we shall keep forever the memory of your friendliness, vitality and unique humour. Your main scientific field - Constructive Logic and Constructive Mathematics - had a strong influence on the formation of the Bulgarian logical school, as in many other countries. Several of the Bulgarian logicians made their first steps in logic in the environment of the great Russian school of Constructivism. We now see the fruitfulness of the constructive approach in the collaboration of Logic and many applied areas as Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science and Linguistics.
We hope to have the occasion to take part in many further similar celebrations of you.
From the Department of Mathematical Logic and Applications
at Sofia University, Sofia, Bulgaria
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From: Michael Gelfond and Vladik Kreinovich
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 13:27:19 -0600
Subject: Happy Birthday!
Dear Friends,
We wish we were with you here in St. Petersburg to celebrate the 80th
anniversary of our beloved teacher Nikolai Aleksandrovich Shanin.
We emigrated at different times, Michael in 1977 and Vladik in 1989,
so often Americans who listen to our stories get the impression that
we came from two different countries. Probably from our stories about
Shanin one may get an impression that we knew two different
Shanins. This may be in agreement with what Nikolai Aleksandrovich
used to say when confronted with a contradiction between his current
and past views: "In seven years, all
the molecules in a body change, so after seven years, I am a
completely new person, and I am allowed to take a new viewpoint".
Based on this logic, we were indeed acquainted with two different
Shanins, and Nikolai Aleksandrovich whose anniversary is celebrated
right now is a third one. All we can say is no matter how many Shanins
there were and there is, we love and congratulate them all!
Michael had the privilege of attending N.A.'s course on logic. One of
the first phrases with which he started his lecture course was very
unexpected: "Throughout this course, I will teach you to think
slowly". And he indeed taught the students that science is a serious
matter, that if you have found an interesting question, you must
concentrate on it, and if you concentrate on something then even such
a seemingly simple thing as an existential quantifier becomes a source
of deep ideas and theories.
Shanin challenged us to look at any problem from a constructive,
algorithmic viewpoint. Now, we find it
very natural, but it took us quite some time (and often, a radical
change of thinking patterns) to get used to this idea.
In this, he was our teacher, and it is not accidental that the love
for constructivism and algorithms moved both of us from pure math
to computer science.
Shanin influenced us both a lot, and not only by his scientific
ideas, but also by his unusualness.
As a professor, he was unusual in many things: in his
"old-time professor" manner of talking with people very politely and
respectfully, and at the same time in his uncompromising passion for
truth in everything, be it science or politics. When N.A. argued his
viewpoint, often in a big audience of people radically disagreeing
with him, one could feel the energy of an ancient prophet preaching
to non-believers, or of Martin Luther declaring his famous "This is what
I stand for".
He did not
hesitate to repeat that the goal of science is to find the one and only
scientifically correct truth; these very words were then
so many times repeated by Marxist dictators that many people were
embarrassed to repeat them, but it was refreshing and reassuring to
hear from N.A., again and again, that yes, we are aimed at the
truth. We often repeat it to our students in the US, where this idea
is critically important and often underestimated.
N.A. did not hesitate to fight for constructivism in early 1950s,
when constructivism was a political heresy which could easily lead
(genetics was still on everyone's mind) to firings and even
imprisonment. We met him in more liberal times,
but scientists were still sent to jails for political activity.
In spite of the funny name for his group TREPLO ("Idle Chat" in
Russian, abbreviation standing for Theoretical Research (Rasrabotki)
in hEuristic Principles of LOgical deduction), he rarely joined in
"idle chat" about politics, but when he made a stand,
he went all the way.
When Vladik said that he wanted to go for a (required)
student practice to Revolt I. Pimenov, a mathematician who was then
exiled to Komi Republic for political activity, Shanin not only
approved Vladik's trip, but convinced the university to approve it;
moreover, the university paid for Vladik's trip.
When the then Dean refused to accept Zhenya Dantsin to the doctoral
program and, to justify this refusal, lied that he has not received a
recommendation letter (the letter openly lying in front of the Dean
on his desk),
Nikolai Aleksandrovich, in protest, resigned from the
University. This noble reaction of a decent person - quite unusual at
that time, but reminding us of noble characters from history books -
had a profound effect on many students and faculty.
This behavior was typical for Nikolai Aleksandrovich.
When N.A. wrote Vladik a recommendation letter for a doctoral program,
he said: "Does it bother you that I first wrote such a letter for
Vladimir Lifschitz, and he was not accepted. Then, I wrote a similar
letter for Michael Gelfond, and he was not accepted. Then, I wrote
a letter for Zhenya Dantsin, and he was not accepted." Well, Vladik
was not accepted either, but we are absolutely sure that he continued to
write other letters of recommendation. From him, we learned to fight
for truth; from him, we learned persistence; from him, we learned
never to despair and to always lighten up a bad situation with a
good joke.
We wish Nikolai Aleksandrovich all the best. Let him think slowly and
deeply for years and years to come and find unusual deepness in
seemingly evident things.
We want to hear more jokes of his, more ideas of his, and we wish him,
his family, and all friends and former and current students of his,
all the best!
We, on the other side of the globe, will continue our attempts to
follow N.A.'s traditions.
Michael Gelfond and Vladik Kreinovich
El Paso, Texas
members of the new TREPLO - group on Theoretical Research in El Paso
on LOgic programming
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From: Maurice Margenstern
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 16:13:39 +0400
Subject: for NA Shanin
Dear Nikolai Aleksandrovich!
Nailuchie pozhelania s dnem rozhdenia!!
Mne zhalko chto ja ne uspel poehat' k Vam dlja "days".
Kogda to v ne dal'nom budushchee noedu ja v Peterburg i togda yvidimsja!
Eshche raz bsego nailuchego,
S serdechnym poklonom,
Vsegda Vash,
Maurice
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