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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 November 2009
The Universe we live in can be described by a theory created by Alexander A. Friedmann. This theory is a triumph of scientific thought. For the first time ever the human mind embraced the Universe as a whole in its dynamics and development.
What was it that brought him such extraordinary success?
The young school mathematician was noticed by Markov; Steklov became his teacher at university; and in his last days one of his concerns was to publish a posthumous memoir of Lyapunov's. Friedmann was educated by the famous St. Petersburg school of mathematicians that had been founded by Chebyshev and made famous by those four outstanding scientists. His research displayed the excellent inherent features of the school: the ability to link mathematical problems with the fundamental issues of natural science, concrete choice of the object of research, sufficient generality in the problem set-up and a tendency to reduce the problem “to a number,” making it possible to apply practically and verify experimentally the elaborated theory. Just as in mechanics and meteorology, so in cosmology he “worked it out to a number” and gave an estimate for the age of the Universe: 10 billion years as the order of magnitude.
He also absorbed the ideas of modern physics while studying it under the guidance of great scientists, e.g. Ehrenfest, one of the major theoretical physicists of the 20th century. Friedmann was able to receive from him both concrete knowledge and an independent, critical approach to any scientific problem, however well it might be supported by the authority of the classics.
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