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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Science
Alex Bellos

Can you solve it? The maths of Lviv

Lviv National Opera  pictured on 06 Sep 2020
Lviv National Opera pictured on 06 Sep 2020 Photograph: Ukrinform/REX/Shutterstock

Like many of you I’ve hardly been able to think about anything else these past ten days apart from the war in Ukraine. So today’s puzzles are a celebration of Lviv, Ukraine’s western city, which played an important role in the history of 20th century mathematics. During the 1930s, a remarkable group of scholars came up with new ideas, methods and theorems that helped shape the subject for decades.

The Lwów school of mathematics – at that time, the city was in Poland – was a closely-knit circle of Polish mathematicians, including Stefan Banach, Stanisław Ulam and Hugo Steinhaus, who made important contributions to areas including set-theory, topology and analysis.

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