CHORUS Colloquium: Andrei Rodin (University of Lorraine), A.N. Kolmogorov's Way to the International Mathematical Scene & Gabriela Radulescu (Technical University of Berlin): Soviet Radio Astronomers in Communication with (Extra)terrestrial Intelligence

On Thursday, April 20, you are cordially invited to the next colloquium of CHORUS: Colloquium for the History of Russian and Soviet Science, featuring two talks: Andrei Rodin (University of Lorraine), A.N. Kolmogorov's Way to the International Mathematical Scene Gabriela Radulescu (Technical University of Berlin): Soviet Radio Astronomers in Communication with (Extra)terrestrial Intelligence Details: Andrei Rodin (University of Lorraine), A.N. Kolmogorov's Way to the International Mathematical Scene In this talk, I provide an overview of an early stage of the academic career of Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov (before the WW2) with a focus on modalities of his positioning within Russian mathematical community and his professional contacts in Germany and France. Using Kolmogorov’s example, I draw some conclusions about the academic cooperation between the Soviet Russia and the major European countries during this period. Contrary to what one might expect, Kolmogorov’s mathematical publications in foreign journals mark the very beginning of his academic career and chronologically precede his first mathematical publication in a Russian mathematical journal. I show how the place of Russia in the international academic network of the time explains this phenomenon. Andrei Rodin is a mathematician, philosopher and historian; his research interests are mainly in philosophical logic, history and philosophy of mathematics and computer science, and mathematics and computer science education. He is a researcher in the Archives Henri-Poincaré and Loria laboratory in Computer Science at the University of Lorraine in Nancy, France, an associated researcher at laboratory SPHERE (CNRS) at the University Paris-Cité in Paris, and a participant in the Smolny Beyond Boarders Initiative, part of Open Society University Network. He also teaches mathematical and epistemological courses in the Ecole Nationale Supérieure en Génie des Systèmes et de l’Innovation (ENSGSI). He is the author of Axiomatic Method and Category Theory (Springer, 2014), and numerous articles. https://philomatica.org/andrei_rodin/ Gabriela Radulescu (Technical University of Berlin): Soviet Radio Astronomers in Communication with (Extra)terrestrial Intelligence In this talk, I will look at the Soviet contributions to radio astronomy’s attempts at contact with extraterrestrial intelligence from the late 1950s until the mid-1970s. Adding to the existing standard history of American scientific efforts in the field, I emphasize the communication across the Iron Curtain throughout the Space Age. According to the common history, contact with extraterrestrial intelligence became a legitimate topic for radio astronomy in 1959 with the publication of the article ‘Searching for Interstellar Communications’ by Cornell University physicists Phillip Morrison and Giuseppe Cocconi in the journal Nature. By looking in parallel at the international astronautics community of the late 1950s, I will contextualize the demands of the Space Age out of which radio astronomy’s extraterrestrial intelligence emerged. I will show how the domain of contact with extraterrestrial intelligence through electromagnetic waves was prompted by the relationship in outer space between the two sides of the political divide. Gabriela Radulescu is a Ph.D. candidate in the History of Science at the Technical University of Berlin and the CHORUS talk is based on her current research. Her previous education background is in History of Ideas and Science (MA, University of Iceland), Social Anthropology (MA, National and University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest), and Philosophy (Bucharest University). https://www.insscide.eu/team/case-study-authors-and-experts/article/gabriela-radulescu The meeting will be held on Thursday, April 20, at 8 am (Los Angeles) / 11 аm (New York) / 17:00 (CET) / 18:00 (Kyiv) / 18:00 (Moscow). To receive the voom link please contact Slava Gerovitch (http://web.mit.edu/slava/homepage/).