Yesterday and Long Ago

Preface.- My first recollections.- The North-West direction.- Vera Stepanovna Arnold (née Zhitkova).- First scientific reminiscences.- The Arnold family.-A household library.- The axiomatic method.- The color of a meridian.- School years.- It is not easy to keep a secret.- The temple of science.- Who is the winner?- State examination on Marxism.- Goodwill.- The thermal conductivity equation.- Lavoisier and French mathematics during the Revolution.- Queen Eleanor, Rosamund, and labyrinth theory.- Place de Vogueses.- 'Champel Sea'.- Neutrinos, neutrons, and Bruno Pontecorvo.- From Pareto to Arzamas.- How to distinguish good and bad mathematical works.- The combinatorics of Plutarch.- Galilei.- The topology of surfaces according to Alexander of Macedon.- Snake-hunting.- Suputinskii nature reserve.- Pheasants of the Vincent forest.- The guillotine and Marie-Antoinette.- Damiens’s sufferings.- Queen Marguerite and the kingdom of law.- Jeanne d’Arc as a witch and as a saint.- Ravailliac, French cuisine, and traffic jams.- Anne Yaroslavna, Princess of Russia.- Gennady of Novgorod and education in Russia under Ivan III.- Catherine I and the Prut river campaign.- Catherine II and I.I.Betskoi.- An order of Catherine II.- Radishchev.- The Crimean war.- Princess Dashkova and parachutes.- The desecrated host and abstract algebra.- France – Guinea – India.- Julius Caesar and Gallians: protecting Rome from Germans.- A planning department.- Mountain lions over Stanford.- The Pocha river and the dog Shnura.- Hong Kong.- The Pongoma river and the Solovetskie islands.- Brazilian tours.- Leibnitz as Bourbaki’s predecessor.- The 'Mistral' in the 'Crown'.- How academicians were elected and eliminated.- From the history of French economy.- The origins of mathematics: from Greece to Egypt.- Motivation for mathematical education in Israel.- Struggles against foreigners and their languages.- 'Our Manchuria'.- Religion and science, Martin Luther and anti-semitism.- Ramanujan andHardy.- Catching a pike in Cambridge.- Locust swarming and relocation of deer.- Tamil Tigers at the Swiss consulate in Paris.- Picking cranberries.- The Yamal peninsula and digging caves in the snow.- Brain tomography, geometry, and algebra.- Inedible hares.- A question about the bitch of Rabinovitch.- The cemetery at Aksin’ino