Gamow and Mathematics: Personal Reminiscences

Abstract

Gamow’s interest in mathematics started in his childhood. In his autobiography, My World Line, he mentions the first mathematical problems which directed his curiosity toward the world of numbers through which, by degrees, he became interested in physics. He also describes the courses he took in mathematics and his professors at the University of Leningrad. He says that in those days he was already attracted to the more qualitative more purely conceptual parts of mathematics and, by contrast, he rather disliked the more calculational and formally technical areas of mathematics. So, for example, he was fascinated by the ideas of set theory, the problem of the infinite in general, beyond the purely mathematical treatment of infinity by the infinitesimal calculus in physical problems. He was interested in topology, also in number theory and in combinatorics — the last two being more concerned with manipulation and technical operations per se than set theory and topology are.