Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Sidor ...
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD 67
ished at the quickness with which I grasped and
assimilated the conceptions of the terms and
derivatives, "just as if I had known them before." I
remember that this was precisely the way in which he
expressed himself, and in truth the fact was that at
the moment when he began to explain to me these
conceptions, I immediately and vividly remembered
that all this had stood on the pages of
Ostrogràd-sky, so memorable to me, and the conception of space
seemed to have been familiar to me for a long time.1
1 S. K.’s tutor, Mr. Malévitch, says that when he first knew
her she exhibited rare understanding, a power of quickly
mastering whatever was taught her, and that she always knew her
lessons well. During the first lessons in mathematics which
he gave her he did not observe in her any special capacity in
that direction; she was like all his previous girl pupils in that
respect. " One day, after dinner, the General asked his
favorite daughter: ’ Well, S6fa, have you taken a fancy to
arithmetic?’ ’No, papa,’ she replied. Less than four months
later my pupil, in reply to nearly the same question from her
father, answered: ’Yes, papa, I love to study arithmetic. It
gives me great pleasure.’ Three or four years of uniformly
successful study passed without any noteworthy episode; but
when we got to geometry, to the relations of the circumference
of a circle to its diameter, my pupil, in explaining what I had
told her in the preceding lesson, to my amazement reached the
same goal by an entirely different road, and by special
combinations of her own." Mr. Malévitch admits that, when he
pointed out to her the somewhat circuitous road which she had
taken, the young mathematician flushed up and began to cry.
"But," he adds, "those were the first and the last tears which
my pupil shed over her lessons in the whole nine years during
which I taught her."
—" Recollections of Sophia Ko valévsky," by I. I. Malévitch.
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
