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Slava Gerovitch

Historian of science at MIT, specializing in the history of Soviet mathematics, cybernetics, and computing, and author of a body of work drawing on archival research and oral-history interviews with Soviet-era émigré mathematicians.

Matters to this vault as the sole located source, as of this writing, for the content of the 1978 ICM memorandum "The Situation in Soviet Mathematics": his 2025 Princeton lecture abstract, drawing on Eugene Dynkin's papers and roughly 100 oral interviews, is the only available secondhand description of what the memo said — and the researcher whose future publication would most likely resolve question-verify-1978-icm-memorandum-names-pontryagin-as-boycott-target.

References

claim-gerovitch-abstract-frames-1978-icm-memo-discrimination-charge-collectively

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Does the 1978 ICM memorandum 'The Situation in Soviet Mathematics' name Pontryagin specifically as a target of the proposed academic-exchange boycott?

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The one located description of the 1978 ICM memo's content frames its discrimination accusation collectively, naming no individual Soviet mathematician as a target

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No source located in a dedicated search confirms or denies that the 1978 ICM memorandum 'The Situation in Soviet Mathematics' names Pontryagin individually

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Novikov's memoir describes a separate, individually-addressed 'antipontryagin letter' and Pontryagin's reply to it, shown to him by Martin Kruskal in Kiev in September 1979 — not the same document as the 1978 ICM memorandum

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Eugene Dynkin

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Does the 1978 ICM memorandum 'The Situation in Soviet Mathematics' name Pontryagin specifically as a target of the proposed academic-exchange boycott?

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