13
Editors’ foreword
bibliographic rarities. Others were recently discovered in archives and
are published for the first time. This section includes Lyapunov’s essays
about the mathematicians N.N. Luzin, P.S. Novikov and L.V. Keldysh,
the physicist P.P. Lazarev, the geophysicist G.A. Gamburtsev, the biolo-
gist I.I. Schmalhausen and others. Part Three
includes a collection of
several theoretical and methodological papers by A.A. Lyapunov. As is
well known, Lyapunov was a brilliant and original educator. Among
other issues, he was particularly concerned with the methodology of
education and the reform of curricula. Part Four contains papers by
the mathematicians A.N. Lyapunov and S.S. Kutateladze who comment
on A.A. Lyapunov’s series of works on fully additive vector functions
and the Lyapunov Convexity Theorem. These
works have found broad
application in mathematical statistics and mathematical economics.
In Part Five, B.A. Trakhtenbrot describes his memories of Lyapunov’s
work in the area of set theory during his stay in Novosibirsk as well as
a remarkable episode concerning his relationship with his last pupil in
that field, V.I. Amstislavsky. The book makes special emphasis on me-
moirs, which comprise Part Six. We received such memoirs from nu-
merous contributors who had worked with Lyapunov or had an occasion
to meet him. The section includes almost 30 such essays. Among the
authors are people of all ages including
childhood friends of Lyapu-
nov, well-known members of the Academy of Sciences, and students of
the Artillery Academy and other educational institutions. The section
even includes memoirs of the former world chess champion Mikhail
Botvinnik.
Every memoir mentions the indelible impression that this wise,
honorable and selfless person made on people. The high spiritual and
moral standards of Alexey Andreevich Lyapunov
provide full grounds for
describing him as an “
devotee
” – the word rarely used nowadays but re-
cently redefined by Vladimir Andreyevich Uspensky as follows: “
A devotee
is a person who engages in his work selflessly, without thinking of his per-
sonal profit and having subjugated his ambitions and actions to a great
cause
”.
The Attachments to this book (Part Seven) include certain archival
documents relating to A.A. Lyapunov’s
life history, several versions of
his autobiography written over the years, a list of more than 100 papers
delivered and discussed at the cybernetics seminars that Lyapunov con-
ducted at Moscow State University during 1956–1964, documents relat-
ing to the founding of Lyapunov scholarship at NSU,
the full bibliogra-
phy of his scientific and publicistic works and a bibliography of
publications about him.
14
Editors’ foreword
The book ends on a major chord as it describes that in 2009, a street
in Akademgorodok where the Physics and Math High School, Lyapu-
nov’s favorite creation, is located was renamed
Lyapunov Street
in his
honor. This act of commemoration was worthy
of the prominent scien-
tist, educator and person that was Alexey Andreevich Lyapunov.
N.A. Lyapunova, A.M. Fedotov, Ya.I. Fet