Anatoly Fomenko

Anatoly Fomenko
Born	(1945-03-13) 13 March 1945 Stalino, Ukraine, USSR
Alma mater	Moscow State University
Occupation	Mathematician Professor
Employer	Moscow State University
Known for	New Chronology
Awards	State Prize of the Russian Federation

Anatoly Timofeevich Fomenko (Russian: Анато́лий Тимофе́евич Фоме́нко) (born 13 March 1945 in Stalino, USSR) is a Soviet and Russian mathematician, professor at Moscow State University, well known as a topologist, and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is the author of a pseudoscientific theory known as New Chronology, based on works of Russian-Soviet writer and freemason Nikolai Alexandrovich Morozov. He is also a member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences (1991).

Biography

Fomenko is the son of Timothy Grigorievich Fomenko (Russian: Тимофей Григорьевич Фоме́нко), an industrial engineer, and Valentina Polikarpovna (née Markova) (Russian: Валентина Поликарповна Маркова), a philologist and teacher of Russian language and literature. His parents would later co-author his works on history in 1983 and 1996. Born in Donetsk, then called Stalino, he was raised and schooled in Magadan. In 1959, his family returned to Eastern Ukraine and settled in the city of Luhansk, where Fomenko attended Secondary School No. 26. During secondary school, Fomenko participated in many competitions relating to mathematics and won several medals as a result. Also in 1959, the magazine "Pionyerskaya pravda" (Russian: Пионерская правда, Pioneer Truth) published his first known science fiction story, "The Mystery of the Milky Way".

Fomenko graduated from the Mechanics and Mathematics Faculty of Moscow State University in 1967, and in 1969 began working in the department of differential geometry in said faculty. In 1970 he defended his thesis "Classification of totally geodesic manifolds realizing nontrivial cycles in Riemannian homogeneous spaces", and in 1972 defended his doctoral thesis, "The decision of the multidimensional Plateau problems on Riemannian manifolds." In December 1981 he became a professor of the department of higher geometry and topology, and in 1992 became the head of the department of differential geometry.

Fomenko has served as the editor of several Russian-language mathematics journals and is a member of many councils overseeing dissertations in his field. In 1996, he won the State Prize of the Russian Federation for excellence in mathematics.

Mathematical work

Fomenko is a full member (Academician) of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1994), the International Higher Education Academy of Sciences (1993) and Russian Academy of Technological Sciences (2009), as well as a doctor of physics and mathematics (1972), a professor (1980), and head of the Differential Geometry and Applications Department of the Faculty of Mathematics and Mechanics in Moscow State University (1992). Fomenko is the author of the theory of topological invariants of an integrable Hamiltonian system. He is the author of 180 scientific publications, 26 monographs and textbooks on mathematics, a specialist in geometry and topology, variational calculus, symplectic topology, Hamiltonian geometry and mechanics, and computational geometry. Fomenko is also the author of a number of books on the development of new empirico-statistical methods and their application to the analysis of historical chronicles as well as the chronology of antiquity and the Middle Ages.

Fomenko is the author of extensive writings in his original fields of mathematics, and is also known for his original drawings inspired by topological objects and structures.

Historical revisionism

During the Soviet years, Fomenko was frequently involved in the state-sponsored studies, an open source analysis, the subject of which was contemporary Western media news, which were analysed and searched for misinterpretations of actual events by mixed teams consisting of various Soviet scholars, using interdisciplinary approach and statistical analysis of textual information in particular. They routinely received the latest translated issues of The New York Times, The Washington Post, BBC dispatches, etc., as well as wide array of various national and local newspapers, radio and television transcripts, and other open sources, searched them carefully for discrepancies and inconsistencies, preparing the consolidated reports for the official use only. Dealing professionally with biased information in the media, at some point Fomenko became obsessed with an idea that the entire history of mankind was skilfully falsified on purpose, and decided to apply the same methods he used during his contemporary studies to study ancient events. Thus, he simply ignores many written sources, as if they are biased media, and it is usual for the contemporary media to copy and reprint with minor copy editing some stories, originally published by the others, implying that if the original source is itself biased, then its renderings in other sources are no better, and multiplied by language barrier and broken telephone-effect they only add a confusion to already inaccurate picture. Based on that general idea, he proposed to use methods of exact sciences and natural science instead of just relying on a good faith of ancient chronologists and authors, that certain historical events could be traced and dated accurately by matching them to natural events of the time (such as eclipses, eruptions, etc.) cross-referenced in various eyewitness accounts. While some of his colleagues agree that indeed certain historical events require a very careful reexamination based on methods, which became available by today's cutting-edge technology, Fomenko goes further and tries to re-examine the entire history.

Fomenko is a supporter of drastically revising historical chronology. He has created his own revision called New Chronology, based on statistical correlations, dating of zodiacs, and by examining the mathematics and astronomy involved in chronology. Fomenko claims that he has discovered that many historical events do not correspond mathematically with the dates they are supposed to have occurred on. He asserts from this that all of ancient history (including the history of Greece, Rome, and Egypt) is just a reflection of events that occurred in the Middle Ages and that all of Chinese and Arab history are fabrications of 17th and 18th century Jesuits.

He also claims that Jesus lived in the 12th century A.D. and was crucified on Joshua's Hill; that the Trojan War and the Crusades were the same historical event; and that Genghis Khan and the Mongols were actually Russians, that the lands west of the 13 colonies that now constitute the American West and Middle West were a far eastern part of "Siberian-American Empire" prior to its disintegration in 1775, and many other theories, that contradict the conventional historiography to say the least. As well as disputing written chronologies, Fomenko also disputes more objective dating techniques such as dendrochronology and radiocarbon dating (see here for an examination of the latter criticism). His books include Empirico-statistical Analysis of Narrative Material and Its Applications and History: Fiction or Science?.

Most Russian scientists and worldwide historians consider Fomenko's historical works to be either pseudoscientific or antiscientific.

Artwork

Fomenko is an accomplished painter and illustrator whose work often depicts objects from mathematics, many related to topology.

Publications

Mathematical

• A.V.Bolsinov and A.T. Fomenko : Integrable Hamiltonian Systems: Geometry, Topology, Classification (Hardcover), ISBN 0-415-29805-9
• B. A. Dubrovin, S. P. Novikov, A.T. Fomenko Modern Geometry. Methods and Applications. Springer-Verlag, GTM 93, Part 1, 1984; GTM 104, Part 2, 1985. Part 3, 1990, GTM 124.
• A.T. Fomenko, V. V. Trofimov Integrable Systems on Lie Algebras and Symmetric Spaces. Gordon and Breach, 1987.
• A.T. Fomenko Differential Geometry and Topology Plenum Publishing Corporation. 1987. USA, Consultants Bureau, New York and London.
• A.T. Fomenko Integrability and Nonintegrability in Geometry and Mechanics. Kluwer Academic Publishers, The Netherlands, 1988.
• A.T. Fomenko Tensor and Vector Analysis: Geometry, Mechanics and Physics. – Taylor and Francis, 1988.
• A.T. Fomenko Symplectic Geometry. Methods and Applications. Gordon and Breach, 1988. Second edition 1995.
• A.T. Fomenko, S. P. Novikov The basic elements of differential geometry and topology. Kluwer Acad. Publishers, The Netherlands, 1990.
• Mathematical Impressions, by A. T. Fomenko and Richard Lipkin, American Mathematical Society, 1990, 184 pp. ISBN 0-8218-0162-7
• A.T. Fomenko The Plateau Problem (vols. 1, 2). Gordon and Breach, 1990. (Studies in the Development of Modern Mathematics.)
• A.T. Fomenko Variational Principles of Topology. Multidimensional Minimal Surface Theory. Kluwer Academic Publishers, The Netherlands, 1990.
• A.T. Fomenko Topological variational problems. – Gordon and Breach, 1991.
• A.T. Fomenko, Dao Chong Thi Minimal surfaces and Plateau problem. USA, American Mathematical Society, 1991.
• A.T. Fomenko, A.A.Tuzhilin Geometry of Minimal Surfaces in Three-Dimensional Space. USA, American Mathematical Society. In: Translation of Mathematical Monographs. vol.93, 1991.
• A.T. Fomenko Topological Classification of Integrable Systems. Advances in Soviet Mathematics, vol. 6. USA, American Mathematical Society, 1991.
• A.T. Fomenko Visual geometry and topology. Springer-Verlag, 1994.
• A.T. Fomenko, S.V.Matveev Algorithmic and Computer Methods for Three-Manifolds. Kluwer Academic Publishers, The Netherlands, 1997.
• A.T. Fomenko, T.L. Kunii Topological Modeling for Visualization. – Springer-Verlag, 1997.
• A.T. Fomenko, A. V. Bolsinov Integrable Hamiltonian Systems: Geometry, Topology, Classification. Taylor and Francis, 2003.

Pseudohistorical

• Fomenko A.T. «Some new empirico–statistical methods of dating and the analysis of present global chronology»,— London: The British Library, Department of printed books. Cup. 918/87, 1981.
• A.T. Fomenko, V. V Kalashnikov., G. V. Nosovsky Geometrical and Statistical Methods of Analysis of Star Configurations. Dating Ptolemy's Almagest. – CRC-Press, USA, 1993.
• A.T. Fomenko Empirico-Statistical Analysis of Narrative Material and its Applications to Historical Dating. Vol.1: The Development of the Statistical Tools. Vol.2: The Analysis of Ancient and Medieval Records. – Kluwer Academic Publishers. The Netherlands, 1994.
• A.T. Fomenko New Methods of Statistical Analysis of Historical Texts. Applications to Chronology. Antiquity in the Middle Ages. Greek and Bible History. Vols.1, 2, 3. – Edwin Mellen Press. USA. Lewiston. Queenston. Lampeter, 1999.
• Fomenko A.T. «Antiquity in the Middle Ages. Greek and Bible History»,— USA, Lewiston, Queenston, Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, (Scholarly Monographs in the Russian Language), 1999.
• A.T. Fomenko et al.: History: Fiction or Science? Chronology 1, Introducing the problem. A criticism of the Scaligerian chronology. Dating methods as offered by mathematical statistics. Eclipses and zodiacs. ISBN 2-913621-07-4
• A.T. Fomenko et al.: History: Fiction or Science? Chronology 2, The dynastic parallelism method. Rome. Troy. Greece. The Bible. Chronological shifts. ISBN 2-913621-06-6
• A.T. Fomenko et al.: History: Fiction or Science? Chronology 3, Astronomical methods as applied to chronology. Ptolemy’s Almagest. Tycho Brahe. Copernicus. The Egyptian zodiacs. ISBN 2-913621-08-2
• Nosovsky G.V., Fomenko А.Т. «Russia. Britain. Byzantium. Rome. History: Fiction or Science? Chronology vol. IV»,— Paris, London, New York: Mithec, Delamere Resources LLC, 2008, 727 pp.

External links

• Extra-mathematical associations in mathematical images
• New Chronology official site (English language)
• New Chronology analysis and criticism (Russian language)
• Anatoly Fomenko at the Mathematics Genealogy Project