There are two bas reliefs at the entrance to the building of the Physics and Mathematics School in Akademgorodok, the bas reliefs of Mikhail Lavrentiev and Alexei Lyapunov. The Physics and Mathematics School is not the only school that unites the names of these persons.
Lavrentiev and Lyapunov were representatives of the greatest scientific school of the twentieth century, the school of Luzin. The triumphs and tragedies of Luzin's school is a hologram of the triumphs and tragedies of the Soviet Russia. The fates of Lavrentiev and Lyapunov are the world lines to good and light through the turbulent fluxes of blood and evil.
Lavrentiev was one of the first students of Luzin and Lyapunov was his last disciple. Lavrentiev edited the postmortem three volumes of the selected works of Luzin to the anniversary of the 70th years of his birth. Lyapunov authored the formal obituary of Luzin which was signed by a list of official state institutions. The last 14 years of his life Luzin carried the badge of the “adversary in a Soviet mask” and was an exemplary outcast of the Soviet scientific community, an adversary, but an adversary free at large who was even not expelled from the Academy of Sciences.
Many students of Luzin participated in his pursuit and political execution. Lavrentiev and Lyapunov never betrayed their teacher and continued his deeds. The Physics and Mathematics School is a juvenile affiliation of the great Russian mathematical school of Luzin. Remembering our teachers Lavrentiev and Lyapunov, we bow to them and thank their mutual teacher, Nikolai Nikolaevich Luzin.
October 13, 2011.
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