Computationer's day and Andronow
The 1st of December is an important day for people who graduated from Lobachevsky University's CMC (Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics) faculty. This was the first faculty in the USSR to specialize in cybernetics and computational support for applied mathematics, having been established in 1963. Today, if you want to study computer science, you choose this faculty; however, back then, it was more about the basics than programming. I was fortunate to join the faculty in the early 2000s and learn from the old-schoolish teachers by chance. This education had nothing to do with programming, and I remain convinced that programming should not be studied at a fundamental university. A decent university is all about math (or physics, you get it). Programming is only a skill, similar to, say, catching grapes with your mouth (though programming may be a little more commercialized). But I digress.
To be honest, I started this article feeling obliged to celebrate Computationer's Day in some way but unsure of what I wanted to discuss. In the end, this website feels like a series of etudes with no fixed topic. Still, there is a baseline that is difficult to articulate but that implicitly underpins everything ever written here. That is a systematic approach we can render from Poincare through Andronow's school aimed at describing various engineering and natural phenomena using a common language of math.
Another property of Andronow is his remarkable personality. For our city, Andronow is an iconic person. We have had a great scientific heritage here in Gorky that is currently fading away day after day. That is unfortunate, but CMC's golden days have passed, and our Russian high school has lost its scientific and engineering leadership.
Finally, I'd like to share some fresh media on Andronow's school (all in Russian):
- Round table. I cleaned up this video to include only the talks that are of sufficient quality to watch.
- Andronow and math. That's an introductory talk to Andronow's works.