【引语收集计划】 Interview With Russian mathematician Vladimir Arnold

Interviewer:

Please tell us a little bit about your early education.Were you already interested in mathematics as a child?

Arnold: … … …

The first real mathematical experience I had
was when our schoolteacher I.V. Morotzkin gave us the following
problem [VA then formulated Problem 89 in Chapter 3].
I spent a whole day thinking on this oldie, and the solution (based
on what are now called scaling arguments, dimensional analysis, or
toric variety theory, depending on your taste) came as a revelation.
The feeling of discovery that I had then (1949 ) was exactly the
same as in all the subsequent much more serious problems – be
it the discovery of the relation between algebraic geometry of real
plane curves and four-dimensional topology (1970 ), or between
singularities of caustics and of wave fronts and simple Lie algebras
and Coxeter groups (1972 ). It is the greed to experience such a
wonderful feeling more and more times that was, and still is, my
main motivation in mathematics