Word: bernstein
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...this world-reknowned scholar, it meant that he never had the chance to gain a position in a Soviet math department or institute. "I never tried to do that. It was just impossible," recalls Bernstein...
...Bernstein in speaking from his cramped Science Center office, where he is now safely ensconced as the newest full professor in the Math Department. He is doing general research, as well as teaching a graduate course on p-adic fields. He arrived at Harvard this semester, following a stint as a visiting professor at the University of Maryland and his emigration from the Soviet Union in the summer...
...story of this 37-year-old professor is by no means unique. Bernstein follows friend and Harvard colleague, Professor of Mathematics David Kazhdan, as well as 40 or 50 other Russian mathematicians who have emigrated to the United States and other countries in the last 10 years-the victims of a new wave of official anti-Semitism that is said to have hit the mathematics establishment particularly hard...
...Soviets allow mathematicians of such caliber to go seems rather odd, especially in light of their fixation with mathematical and technical expertise. Nathanson guesses that it has to do with the fact that scholars like Bernstein and Kazhdan work in pure mathematics which, unlike applied math, has no immediate use for developing weapons and technology. "These people tend to be short-sighted," he says, adding that losing such mathematicians could come back to haunt the Soviets in the long-term...
...determined effect from pushing out established mathematicians is only part of the Soviet problem. Discouraging younger Jewish scholars from advancing could also have serious implications for Soviet efforts in the field. Bernstein in himself estimates that in his undergraduate class of about 400 to 500, at least one-fourth were Jewish. Now, he says, the figure has dropped to 1 percent...