---
title: "A. Shen"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "A. Shen"
aliases: ["Alexander Shen"]
first_seen: "2026-08-20T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["Mekh-mat coffin problems","A. Vershik","Kanevskii & Senderov 1979-80 data","antisemitism in Soviet mathematics"]
seek_code_commit: "17d9798"
---


Russian mathematician and computer scientist who entered Moscow State
University's Mekh-mat as a student in 1974, began graduate study there in
1979, and taught in Soviet mathematical schools from 1977 onward — a direct
participant-witness to the entrance-exam discrimination he later documented.
His 1994 *Mathematical Intelligencer* Opinion piece, "Entrance Examinations
to the Mekh-mat," is the vault's richest primary source on how Mekh-mat's
"coffin problems" mechanism actually worked: he names ~20 problems verbatim,
each dated and attributed to a specific examiner, and reproduces
B.I. Kanevskii and V.A. Senderov's statistical evidence of the resulting
admission-rate gap.

## References
- [[claim-mekh-mat-coffin-problems-used-to-fail-jewish-applicants]]
- [[claim-kanevskii-senderov-1979-data-shows-mekh-mat-admission-gap-despite-jewish-applicants-olympiad-edge]]
- Captures: 10-inbox/raw/2026-08-20-do-primaryscholarly-sources-confirm-that-mekh-mats-coffin.md