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I know that the title is a little weird, sorry about that. The thing is that one day I asked my russian instructor, who's russian, how to pronounce Kolmogorov in russian (because it has too many o's) and she told me that is Холмогóров, but in the wiki article says that his name is Колмогóров, why is this?

Artemix
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Ana Galois
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    That's just a mistake, the real last name of the famous Soviet mathematician is Колмогóров. – Yellow Sky May 02 '14 at 02:54
  • Check that you can pronounce Чебыщев and Чеботарев correctly too. At least in English these mathematician names are not close to the native pronunciation. – KCd May 02 '14 at 04:20
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    @KCd did you mean Чебышев? – Anixx May 02 '14 at 08:35
  • @Anixx: yes, I did. – KCd May 02 '14 at 10:02
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    By the way, the correct spelling of Чебышев is Чебышёв, so it is pronounced "chee-bih-SHOFF". – Yellow Sky May 02 '14 at 14:49
  • @YellowSky: I know the names are more accurately Чебышёв and Чеботарёв, but (1) е is used for ё in writing so often that I don't think Чебышев is really wrong, (2) part of the point of my comment was precisely that a reader will encounter the names in the form Чебышев and Чеботарев, and (3) I was writing my first comment on a tablet, where the Cyrillic keyboard didn't have ё available. – KCd May 02 '14 at 16:29
  • @KCd - That's OK, no problem, I didn't mean you were wrong. – Yellow Sky May 02 '14 at 16:54

2 Answers2

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Your Russian teacher was not a mathematician, so she probably guessed that the name is "kholmogorov", as there is a Russian word "kholm" meaning a hill.

The correct name is Kolmogorov, and you pronounce it roughly as "Kalmagoraf"

Aksakal almost surely binary
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  • Among the population in Russia outside of science, would you say that Kolmogorov is not widely known? – KCd May 02 '14 at 16:31
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    @KCd - No, he isn't. – Yellow Sky May 02 '14 at 20:39
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    I guess he's not, which is amusing, because he wrote the high school calculus textbook. Now, in Russia teachers can't use any textbook they wish, they have to use approved ones, AND calculus is compulsory. So, there must be a generation of people who must have read his textbook, yet they don't know him. – Aksakal almost surely binary May 02 '14 at 20:47
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    @KCd: In my experience, most well-educated people in Russia know Kolmogorov. Perhaps, Lobachevsky, Chebyshev and Kovalevskaya are even more widely known but other Russian mathematicians are less known than Kolmogorov. (I would say that Kolmogorov is more widely known in Russia than Richard Feynman is in the US.) – Yury May 04 '14 at 23:47
  • Kovalevskaya is more known than Kolmogorov? Oh my... that completely blown my mind! – Ana Galois May 05 '14 at 19:50
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    I think that Kovalevskaya is definitely known more, as well as Lobachevsky. The deal with Kovalevskaya was that she fit the communist feminism narrative, in my opinion. The fact that she did some cool stuff didn't hurt her recognition either, while both her and Kolmogorov's bodies of work are well beyond high school curriculum. Functional analysis and measure theoretic probability is taught in college for math majors. – Aksakal almost surely binary May 05 '14 at 19:54
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Происхождение фамилии «Колмогоров» связано с топонимом «Колмогоры», а он, вероятно, происходит от финского kolme «три» (т. е. «Трехгорка»), или от kalma, «могила», и kari, «утес». «Холмогоры» – русификация Происхождение от топонима Кроме Колмогор (Холмогор) в Архангельской области, топоним известен в Кемеровской. Деревни Колмогорово также существуют в Сибири Женская форма фамилии - Колмогорова.

Dmitriy
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