Edward Frenkel

Mathematician, later a professor at UC Berkeley. As a Mekh-mat applicant in 1984, anonymized as "Edik" in Mark Saul's 1999 Notices of the AMS account, he had every answer on his oral entrance exam rejected — including a definition of a circle marked wrong for omitting the word "all" — and was privately advised afterward to apply instead to the "Kerosinka" (Gubkin Institute for Petrochemical and Natural Gas Industry). Frenkel later wrote his own retrospective essay on the episode, "The Fifth Problem: math & anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union" (The New Criterion, 2012; not fetched this session).

References

• claim-saul-1999-account-narrates-frenkels-1984-mekh-mat-rejection-and-referral-to-kerosinka
• Captures: 10-inbox/raw/2026-08-20-do-primaryscholarly-sources-confirm-that-mekh-mats-coffin.md