Felix Berezin: Life And Death Of The Mastermind Of Supermathematics Life and Death of the Mastermind of Supermathematics

Felix Berezin was an outstanding Soviet mathematician who in the 1960s and 70s was the driving force behind the emergence of the branch of mathematics now known as supermathematics. The integral over the anticommuting Grassmann variables that he introduced in the 1960s laid the foundation for the path integral formulation of quantum field theory with fermions, the heart of modern supersymmetric field theories and superstrings. The Berezin integral is named for him, as is the closely related construction of the Berezinian, which may be regarded as the superanalog of the determinant. This book features a masterfully written memoir by Berezin's widow, Elena Karpel, who narrates a remarkable account of Berezin's life and his struggle for survival under the totalitarian Soviet regime. Supplemented with recollections by his close friends and colleagues, Berezin's accomplishments in mathematics, his novel ideas and breakthrough works, are reviewed in two articles written by Andrei Losev and Robert Minlos.

This book presents several recent advances in natural language semantics and explores the boundaries between syntax and semantics over the last two decades. It is based on some of the most recent theories in logic, such as linear logic and ludics, first created by Jean-Yves Girard, and it also provides some sharp analyses of computational semantical representations, explaining advanced theories in theoretical computer sciences, such as the lambda-mu and Lambek-Grishin calculi which were applied by Philippe de Groote and Michael Moortgat. The author also looks at Aarne Ranta's 'proof as meaning' approach, which was first based on Martin-Löf's Type Theory.Meaning, Logic and Ludics surveys the many solutions which have been proposed for the syntax-semantics interface, taking into account the specifications of linguistic signs (continuous or discontinuous) and the fundamental mechanisms developed by linguists and notable Generativists. This pioneering publication also presents ludics (in a chapter co-authored with Myriam Quatrini), a framework which allows us to characterize meaning as an invariant with regard to interaction between processes. It is an excellent book for advanced students, and academics alike, in the field of computational linguistics.