About Grisha Mints.

The author remembers his meetings and discussions with a remarkable mathematician and logician Grigori (Grisha) Mints. I remember Grisha Mints when he was still a student. He entered the Faculty of Mathematics and Mechanics (“math-mech”) of Leningrad State University when I graduated (1956), and while I was a doctoral student (since 1958) I met him sometimes. In fact, his closest friend – Sergey Maslov – a future renowned logician, attended, when he was in his terminal class at school, a mathematical seminar organized at math-mech for the school children, where I was a tutor during a whole year. So when I met him at the faculty, he usually was with Grisha, they were inseparable. And they both, rather early, have selected mathematical logic as their specialty. They both were among the best students of their promotion. By this reason, and also because the Spring of 1956 was the high time of the Khrushchev liberal “thaw”, their scientific adviser N. A. Shanin, himself one of the principal followers of A. A. Markov (Jr.), could persuade the administration of the Academy of Sciences that both have to be taken to the post-graduate school at the Leningrad Department of the Steklov mathematical institute (LOMI). Note, that in Soviet times, when the director of the Mathematical institute (MIAN in Moscow) was I. M. Vinogradov, a notorious antisemite, for a Jew (as Mints) or half-Jew (as Maslov) to be taken as a post-graduate was a rare exception, even more so to be taken as a staff member.1 Their successive research, activity, openness for human The author would like to thank Sergei Soloviev for the English translation. 1 There were only a few Jews – members of the MIAN – Mathematical Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow and Lenigrad Department as well) during the long directorship of Vinogradov. The exceptions were, of course, admitted by Vinogradov himself for some reason. On rare occasions he yielded to the lengthy appeal of some well-known mathematicians such as

Authors

• Anatoly M. Vershik

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