another sighting of rumo[u]r of new Pynchon book...

[Heikki Raudaskoski]

As has been pointed out on the p-list already (I think),
the rumors have found their way to Wikipedia too:

"It has been rumored that Pynchon's next book will be
about the life and love stories of Sofia Kovalevskaya,
whom he allegedly studied in Germany. The former German
minister of culture has claimed that he assisted Pynchon i
in his research. It has been noted that Kovalevsky's nom
de plume "Tanya Raevsky" is suspiciously similar to "Wanda
Tinasky".

Who said that the novel's heroine will be an historical
person? (Is this a "Those Who Know, know" thing?) But *let's
assume she is*. And why not Ms Kovalevskaya. But she did not
live in Goettingen in the early 20th century, that is, in
Hilbert's Goettingen. Nor did she fell in love there with a
colleague but with her paleontologist husband Vladimir, with
whom she had entered into a marriage of convenience several
years before. But of course, Naumann's recollections may've
been vague, TRP may've taken artistic liberties etc.

Somebody's also mentioned Emmy Noether, a Hilbert circler
indeed. But she was no Russian. (Again, of course, Naumann's
recollections may've been vague etc. etc.)


The candidate I discovered yesterday is as good as any though:

---------------------------------------------------------------
"Tatiana Ehrenfest-Afanaseva [also spelled Afanassjewa]
1876-1964
Russian Dutch theoretical physicist

[...] Together with her husband, Paul Ehrenfest, TEA authored
a critique of statistical thermodynamics which centered on
a newer, statistical treatment of the behavior of gas molecules.
Their work in articulating the ergodic hypothesis helped
illuminate how microscopic particles in an unbalanced state
could explain the overall balance of the matter.

[Summary: TEA was born in Kiev and grew up in St. Petersburg
with her childless uncle. Then, in Russia, women were not
admitted to universities.  There were, however, special
university-level institutions that allowed women to take courses
in engineering, medicine, and teaching. She attended the women's
pedagogical school and the Women's Curriculum which shadowed
the imperial university. She excelled in mathematics.]

In 1902 TEA [...] travelled to the Univ. of Goettingen in
Germany, then renowned for mathematics and physics. There she
met and fell in love with Paul Ehrenfest, A Jewish physics
student from Vienna. The couple married in 1904, shortly
after PE completed his doctorate under Ludwig Boltzmann in
the Univ. of Vienna. [Summary: first they lived in Germany
and Austria and then settled in St. Petersburg, Russia, in
1907. Russian law forbade Jews and Christians to marry,
and since TEA was Orthodox and PE was Jewish, they could
only live together legally by declaring that they did not
have religion. Later, when Einstein tried to appoint Paul
to replace him in Prague [...] Paul faced another
religiously-related law. All universities in the Austro-Hungary
Empire refused to appoint any professors who did not have
religious affiliations. Since Paul had announced that he did
not have a religion, in order to live with Tatiana in Russia,
he could not suddenly announce that he was once again Jewish.
Despite Einstein's recommendation that he declare his religious
affiliation again, Paul refused to do so and, thus, lost the
opportunity to work in Prague. Finally, in 1912, PE took the
chair of theoretical physics at the Univ. of Leiden in
Netherlands.]

[In Leiden,] TEA took a professional interest in questions of
education [Katje's mentor..?], publishing a number of monographs
and articles in German, Russian, and Dutch that discussed such
issues as axiomatization, randomness and entropy, geometrical
intuition and physical reality, and teaching method. Her output
slowed after the suicide of her husband in 1933, but it resumed
in 1950s, when she wrote two major monographs. She died on April
14, 1964, in Leiden." From _Notable Twentieth_Century Scientists
Vol 1: A-E_, pp. 563-564, Gale 1995.

"Tatiana and Paul Ehrenfest's work on the foundations of
statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics was
important to the development of those fields. 'In 1911
the Ehrenfests gave an incisive analysis of the conceptual
and logical status of Boltzmann's efforts to explain
thermodynamics and irreversibility on a mechanical basis.
[In "Begriffliche Grundlagen der statistischen Auffassung
in der Mechanik" Encyklopaedie der mathematischen
Wissenschaften, vol. 4, part 32 (1911); English translation
by Michael J. Moravcsik as "The Conceptual Foundations of
the Statistical Approach in Mechanics", published by, yes,
Cornell U Press...in 1959...with a new preface by TEA...]
In so doing they made extensive use of the phase-space
representation of mechanical systems - the behavior of
systems as expressed by the time a trajectory spends in
certain regions of the energy surface. They also clarified
how conjectures about this behavior translated into physical
statements: the original ergodic theorem would justify
Boltzmann's procedure, while the quasi-ergodic theorem
(the statement that the trajectory comes arbitrarily near
any point) would not be sufficient to do so. ... {Their]
analysis made crystal clear that the introduction of
suitable probability notions was essential for a consistent
implementation of Boltzmann's program.'"

>From _Twentieth Century Physics_, as quoted in
http://cwp.library.ucla.edu/Phase2/Ehrenfest-Afanaseva,_Tatiana@900123456.html

"She performed research on the modern foundations of
statistical mechanics. Of special interest to her were
questions associated with the concepts of entropy and the
role of chance in physical processes. Her specialty was
the rigorous investigation of fundamental issues." Professor
Joseph Rudnick, UCLA, as quoted on the same site.

Huh.

There is, however, one detail about the life of TEA and her
family that makes me have second thoughts about her suitability
in a Pynchon novel:

"The household was vegetarian, teetotal, and non-smoking."

_Notable Twentieth_Century Scientists Vol 1: A-E_, p. 563.



Heikki