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Youth and Strasbourg Years

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Leonid Isaakovich Mandelstam

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Abstract

Chapter 2 is concerned with Mandelstam’s life from his birth to his departure from Strasbourg, 1879–1914. It contains a sketch of the history of Strasbourg university where Mandelstam had been educated and started his career. This chapter also introduces two figures with whom Mandelstam’s personal trajectory had crossed in Strasbourg: Mandelstam’s scientific supervisor and then his chief Ferdinand Braun and Mandelstam’s life-long friend R. von Mises. Ferdinand Braun’s philosophy, which influenced on Mandelstam’s world view, is specially described.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See the biography of A. Gurvich [33].

  2. 2.

    The author does not know the year of his death. Brandes had published a number of articles on the theory of measurement in radio-engineering.

  3. 3.

    A Russian translation of “Leitfaden” was published in Russian in 1908 [358], an English translation of “Lehrbuch” was published in 1915 [359]. There are other editions of the English version.

  4. 4.

    N.D. Papalexy was born in the family of Major of 51st Lithuanian regiment Dmitry Papalexy in 1890. He belonged to the nobility. In 1899 he finished Odessa gymnasium with a gold medal. Before he entered Strasbourg University he was a student at Berlin University for one year ([368, stock 600, inventory 2, items 1–4]). In 1911 Papalexy took the status of Privatdocent.

  5. 5.

    About the development of the specialism “theoretical physics” see [160].

  6. 6.

    According to J. Zenneck, F. Braun’s former student, with whom Braun collaborated, “radio was discovered by Hertz and Popov. Due to Marconi we practically have wireless telegraphy” [360, p. 409].

  7. 7.

    This Foreword is reprinted in Mandelstam’s “Complete Works” [1, Vol. 3].

  8. 8.

    Under the name “energetism” the history of philosophy combines different concepts, which consider energy as a substance (either the only absolute substance, or, along with matter, one of two basic substances).

  9. 9.

    Among those who sent letters to nominate Mach were also Hendrick Lorentz and Wilhelm Ostwald, see [46, 151].

  10. 10.

    Von Mises wrote in the Foreword to his book “Probability, statistics, truth” that he started to elaborate his approach to probability as early as his Strasbourg years [339].

  11. 11.

    However, Von Mises’ philosophical lecture about modern physics [336, 337] got a Russian-speaking reader in 1924.

  12. 12.

    L. Sharapenko helped to translate some of von Mises’ letters.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia

    Alexander Pechenkin

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Pechenkin, A. (2014). Youth and Strasbourg Years. In: Leonid Isaakovich Mandelstam. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00572-0_2

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