The unreal life of Oscar Zariski

Carol Parikh0387094296, 9780387094298, 9780387094304

Oscar Zariski’s work in mathematics permanently altered the foundations of algebraic geometry. The powerful tools he forged from the ideas of modern algebra allowed him to penetrate classical problems with an unaccustomed depth, and brought new rigor to the intuitive proofs of the Italian School. The students he trained at Hopkins, and later at Harvard, are among the foremost mathematicians of our time.

While what he called his “real life” is recorded in almost a hundred books and papers, this story of his “unreal life” is based upon Parikh’s interviews with his family, colleagues, and students, and on his own memories from a series of tape-recorded interviews made a few years before his death in 1986.

First published in 1991, The Unreal Life of Oscar Zariski was highly successful and widely praised, but has been out of print for many years. Springer is proud to make this book available again, introducing Oscar Zariski to a new generation of mathematicians.

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Table of contents :
Cover……Page 1
Contents……Page 7
Preface……Page 9
Acknowledgments……Page 11
A Foreword for Non-Mathematicians……Page 13
Ch 1 – That Darling Old Lady. Kobrin and Chernigov 1899–1918……Page 23
Ch 2 – Birds Whirling like Numbers. Kiev 1918–1920……Page 31
Ch 3 – Three Great Mathematicians.
Rome 1921–1926……Page 35
Ch 4 – Reading Pushkin and Dante……Page 43
Ch 5 – “Oscar, You Are Not One of Us.”……Page 47
Ch 6 – Walking with Lefschetz. Baltimore 1927–1928……Page 55
Ch 7 – A Voyage of Discovery. 1928–1932……Page 67
Ch 7 – A Voyage of Discovery. 1928–1932……Page 73
Ch 9 – A Citizen of the World of Mathematics. 1935–1937……Page 81
Ch 10 – The Resolution of Some Singularities……Page 89
Ch 11 – A Land of Intellectual Cannibals. 1939–1944……Page 95
Ch 12 – “A Superb Audience of One … André Weil.” São Paulo 1945……Page 101
Ch 13 – Normal Points of a Variety. Cambridge 1947……Page 107
Ch 14 – The Pure Pleasure of It……Page 113
Ch 15 – An Attack on the Theory of Linear Systems. 1950–1956……Page 123
Ch 16 – Tying Bells on Characteristic Zero. 1957–1961……Page 131
Ch 17 – A Feeling of Awe. 1962–1974……Page 143
Ch 18 – The Depth of His Attachment……Page 153
Zariski’s Topological and Other Early Papers……Page 159
Zariski’s Papers on the Foundations of Algebraic Geometry and on Linear Systems……Page 173
Zariski’s Papers on Holomorphic Functions……Page 181
Zariski’s Papers on Resolution of Singularities……Page 187
Zariski’s Papers on Equisingularity……Page 193
Appendix B: Bibliography of Oscar Zariski……Page 205
Index of Names……Page 211