A. Vershik

Russian mathematician whose 1994 Mathematical Intelligencer Opinion piece, "Admission to the Mathematics Faculty in Russia in the 1970s and 1980s," was printed immediately before A. Shen's companion article in the same issue — an independently authored, co-published account of the same episode. Vershik states plainly that Moscow admissions committees' goal "seems to have been to limit the admission of Jews and members of certain other national minorities," corroborating rather than merely repeating Shen's mechanism-level account.

References

• claim-mekh-mat-coffin-problems-used-to-fail-jewish-applicants
• Captures: 10-inbox/raw/2026-08-20-do-primaryscholarly-sources-confirm-that-mekh-mats-coffin.md