In the land far, far away
There is an island
Where parallel rivers are running
With parallel banks
In parallel meadows,
While parallel mountains
In parallel lines
Rise up to the sky
With stars floating in a parallel way…
Whom, do you think, mothers scare fretful children with on this island from the poem by Vladimir Levi? Actually, mothers say: “Lobachevsky will come, and I will give you away to him!” So the kids with hair cut in a parallel way do what they should. Lobachevsky is often called Kopernik of geometry. Meanwhile, he did not intend to turn anything upside down. It so happened that the internationally acclaimed Russian scientist wanted to prove the fifth postulate of Euclid, yet actually confuted it. Thus, we have two geometries today. On February 23, 1826, Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at the Kazan University Nikolay Lobachevsky made report A Concise Outline of the Foundations of Geometry at the Faculty meeting. This very day is considered the birthday of non-Euclidean geometry. This revolutionary geometry was neither appreciated, nor apprehended in Russia. The Academy of Sciences came forward with negative feedback, while magazine Syn Otechestva (Son of Motherland) sarcastically remarked that this theory not only shows the absence of scholar erudition, but defies common sense as well. However, great mathematician Gauss appreciated the idea. At an old age, he even started learning Russian in order to read Lobachevsky’s works.
