Word: mathematician
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Born in Moscow, Sagdeyev, 54, once planned to become a mathematician, like both of his parents. But as a student at Moscow University in the mid-1950s, he switched majors to study physics. "A physicist can still enjoy the beauty of mathematics and have a more intimate interaction with nature," he says. Sagdeyev also took up English, which he calls the "first necessity for a scientist." He passed along his appreciation of the language to his son and daughter, both computer scientists, and to his two small grandchildren...
...education system work better for them than it has for any other immigrant group since the arrival of East European Jews began in the 1880s. Like the Asians, the Jews viewed education as the ticket to success. Both groups "feel an obligation to excel intellectually," says New York University Mathematician Sylvain Cappell, who as a Jewish immigrant feels a kinship with his Asian-American students. The two groups share a powerful belief in the value of hard work and a zealous regard for the role of the family...
...resent Asian-American academic accomplishment, their anxieties may be understandable but are unmerited. "It seems to me that having people like this renews our own striving for excellence," observes Emmy Werner, professor of human development at the University of California at Davis. "We shouldn't be threatened, but challenged." Mathematician Cappell, part of a Jewish immigrant success story, is thrilled by the new inheritors. "Their presence," he says, "is going to be a great blessing for society...
...also extends her portrait, somewhat misguidedly, to include people who were not orphaned but simply separated from their parents, like Charlie Chaplin or Rudyard Kipling. She even argues that America itself is to some extent an orphaned society because its immigrants, from the Mayflower colonists to the latest Chinese mathematician, had to abandon their homes to come here. But the theorizing is not very persuasive. Simpson's best story...
...myth that physical scientists are totally objective in their work. Obviously, you have not noticed how physicists mold their positions on the feasibility of President Reagan's Star Wars program to correlate with their political ideologies. While the scientific merit of Political Scientist Samuel Huntington's work is debatable, Mathematician Serge Lang's comments on that work reveal considerable ignorance about the nature of science. This is not surprising. Though mathematics is the language of science, it is not a science...