1896–1966
○ Diabetes
Bolshevik mathematician who resurrected mathematical logic in the Soviet Union
When the Whites tried to execute her, the bullets struck only her tall hat because she was so small; she fell from the bridge into the river and hid among the reeds until nightfall.
A Bolshevik revolutionary turned Soviet mathematician and philosopher, she was the founder who revived and institutionalized mathematical logic as an autonomous discipline in the Soviet Union. She survived a White Army execution squad during the Civil War, and in 1933 she discovered and published Marx's 'Mathematical Manuscripts,' laying the foundation for Marxist mathematical research worldwide. Once an orthodox Marxist-Leninist who attacked 'idealist' mathematics in the 1930s, she later reversed course and resurrected mathematical logic at Moscow State University during the Stalin era when it was suppressed; she is also known for persuading Wittgenstein to abandon his plan to emigrate to the Soviet Union in 1935.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1918–1919Bolshevik underground in Odessa, secretary of underground Red Cross
- 1919–1920Assistant editor and head of information, 'Red Army' newspaper, Political Directorate of 12th Army
- 1920–1923Party worker, Information Department, Odessa Gubernia Committee
- 1923–1929Student then instructor, Institute of Red Professors
- 1931–1941Professor, Moscow State University; Doctor of Physical-Mathematical Sciences 1935
- 1943–1966Organized and led mathematical logic seminar, Moscow State University
- 1944–1955Head, Department of History of Mathematical Sciences, Moscow State University
- 1959–1966Professor, Department of Mathematical Logic, Moscow State University
Related historical events
Institutionalizing Mathematical Logic and Translation
After leading a seminar on the methodology of mathematics at Moscow State University from 1925, Yanovskaya began teaching mathematical logic in the mid-1930s. Following wartime work in Perm, she returned to Moscow in 1943 and organized and directed a research seminar in mathematical logic, jointly with Ivan Zhegalin and Pavel Novikov. She sought to establish the field not only through research meetings but also through textbooks and specialist literature. In 1947 she translated and edited the Russian edition of Hilbert and Ackermann’s Principles of Mathematical Logic, adding commentary and an introduction. Some Soviet philosophers criticized the book as introducing idealism into logic. In 1948 she supplied an introduction to the Russian edition of Tarski’s Introduction to Logic and to the Methodology of Deductive Sciences and Goodstein’s Mathematical Logic, and promoted translations of works by Kleene and Church. From 1948, the output of the history of mathematics seminar appeared in Historical-Mathematical Studies. When a department of mathematical logic was established in the Mechanics and Mathematics Faculty at Moscow State University in March 1959, she joined it as a professor from its founding, continuing both her Marxist critique and her work in logic.