Unreal Life of Oscar Zariski (eBook)

Contents 7
Preface 9
Acknowledgments 11
A Foreword for Non-Mathematicians 13
That Darling Old Lady Kobrin and Chernigov 1899–1918 23
Birds Whirling like Numbers Kiev 1918– 1920 30
Three Great Mathematicians Rome 1921– 1926 34
Reading Pushkin and Dante 42
“Oscar, You Are Not One of Us.” 46
Walking with Lefschetz Baltimore 1927– 1928 53
A Voyage of Discovery 1928– 1932 64
“The Algebra Which Sheds Light on Geometry” 1932– 1935 70
A Citizen of the World of Mathematics 1935– 1937 77
The Resolution of Some Singularities 84
A Land of Intellectual Cannibals 1939– 1944 90
“A Superb Audience of One … André Weil” São Paulo 1945 96
Normal Points of a Variety Cambridge 1947 101
The Pure Pleasure of It 107
An Attack on the Theory of Linear Systems 1950– 1956 116
Tying Bells on Characteristic Zero 1957– 1961 124
A Feeling of Awe 1962– 1974 135
The Depth of His Attachment 144
A Discussion of Zariski’s Work 149
Zariski’s Papers on the Foundations of Algebraic Geometry and on Linear Systems 163
Zariski’s Papers on Holomorphic Functions 171
Zariski’s Papers on Resolution of Singularities 177
Zariski’s Papers on Equisingularity 183
Bibliography of Oscar Zariski 194
Index of Names 199