HaiMIC

In the summer of 1990, I had just finished defending my PhD dissertation in Minsk (former Soviet Union). A Russian colleague proposed to co-write a book on Mathematics. We agreed that the theoretical part would be in charge by me, and the application would be written by him. Since we self-recognized that we were just above-average, not excellent Ph.D. students, so we were smart enough to understand that we couldn’t publish in the Soviet Union. The topic was trivial, and there was no reason to print.

So we chose English, and applied to publish directly to London, the “high class”. We submitted the outline, about 10 pages, and we got a reply the following week.

The the first page was filled with red underlines with even bigger red text in the margin: … “Your Minsk’s english is so complicated!” … That’s when we suddenly realized that both of us didn’t know English. One thought the other must be very knowledgeable, so no one was dared to correct anything.

We came up with the idea to just write the book and then ask an English professor to review it. We struggled to work, days and nights. After 3-4 months, the 296-page manuscript was completed. This time, the publisher that was honored to be selected was “World Scientific Publishing Company” in Singapore. They accepted fully with no editing nor revision required and notified us that it would be published in 1991.

We brought the book to Moscow and asked to see an Academician of the Soviet Union Academy of Sciences. We were exited to present. He glanced at the cover, then said:

– “Nonsense! This is too easy and stupid.” – He stopped for a second, out of courtesy, turned one more page, and then said: “Because if it was difficult and interesting, someone else would have solved it a long time ago, when is your turn?!”

We sadly left. We came to the Moscow Conservatory of Music to show off to an acquaintance who was studying here. Immediately we asserted our opinion:

– “We have just published our Math book. This topic is very interesting and difficult. The world probably only has a few hundred readers. And only a few dozen people can understand it…”

She glanced at the cover, didn’t bother to turn it over, and said:

– “Rubbish! I don’t understand how talented you guys are to do a job that only a few hundred people care about. In fact, does anyone want to understand a single page here? And for what?”

Seeing our sad faces, she comforted:

– If you have difficulty, go to the central stadium market from tomorrow. Sell jeans, windbreakers… with me. Serve the 20 million Moscow residents.

So I gave up Math since then. It was been 30 years.

PS1.

In the summer of 2013, I visited a friend – a Professor specializing in safety of nuclear power plants, teaching at North Carolina State University (USA). He brought a surprise when he helped me finding my book at the University Library. Thank you, my friend Nam, for taking the commemorative photo. I almost forgot about this book then…

Later on, I found out that the book is available in the libraries of several other universities: Harvard – MIT – Princeton – Cornell – Stanford – Pennsylvania – Brown – Buffalo – Emory – Boston – Manchester…

Only in Harvard, my last name, instead of NGUYEN, but it was misspelled as NGUGEN. Does it mean anything?

PS2.

In the summer of 2017, I met my co-author again after 27 years. He is currently a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Porto, Portugal.

In the 90’s, only people who were famous would include their portraits in books. We did the opposite, so now we have the opportunity to compare the our faces between the past and the present. Time flies. It has already been longer than how old we were back then…

Thank you, Semyon, so much that you are still so passionate about what we were pursuing 27 years ago.

PS3.

And now, after 30 years, the book is still available on Amazon, Google…

It is somewhat comforting, when every year there are still a few interested readers. I am still holding on to a glimmer of hope because the book I wrote was so interesting and so difficult. So few people dare to read because of their fear of not understanding…

https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=nGcXu4gAAAAJ&alert_preview_top_rm=2&citation_for_view=nGcXu4gAAAAJ:u5HHmVD_uO8C

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