Julius Anatolyevich Schreider, OP ''Yu. A. Schreider(28 October 192724 August 1998) was a mathematician, cyberneticist, philosopher, and a convert to Roman Catholicism.

Education and research work

Schreider was born in

Dnepropetrovsk Dnipro is Ukraine's fourth-largest city, with about one million inhabitants. It is located in the eastern part of Ukraine, southeast of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on the Dnieper River, Dnipro River, from which it takes its name. Dnipro is t ...

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. In 1946, he graduated from the renowned Mechanics and Mathematics Faculty of

Moscow State University Moscow State University (MSU), officially M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University,. is a public university, public research university in Moscow, Russia. The university includes 15 research institutes, 43 faculties, more than 300 departments, a ...

. He completed his doctoral work in 1949 and in 1950 completed his postdoctoral dissertation on functional analysis. Schreider worked for several years in various scientific and mathematical training institutes in Moscow, before moving to the department of semiotics of the All-Russian Institute of Scientific and Technical Information at the

Russian Academy of Sciences The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across the Russian Federation; and additional scientific and social units such ...

in 1961, where he remained until 1989. Schrader conducted foundational work in the early days of

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

and was appointed one of the Institute's Professors of Informatics in 1984. In 1960 Schreider became interested in religion and philosophy, eventually devoting significant time to the formal study of philosophy and obtaining a doctorate in philosophy In 1981. He wrote a number of books on both mathematics and philosophy, including "Equality, the Similarity of the Order" (1970), "Systems and Models" (1980), "The Nature of Biological Knowledge" (1991), "Fundamentals of Ethics" (1993), and "The Values That We Choose" (1999). He also published numerous articles, including in the journal "Problems of Philosophy". Several of his and his students' papers on the mathematics of concept hierarchies and

mereology Mereology (; from Greek μέρος 'part' (root: μερε-, ''mere-'') and the suffix ''-logy'', 'study, discussion, science') is the philosophical study of part-whole relationships, also called ''parthood relationships''. As a branch of metaphys ...

were published in English translation in the journal ''Automatic Documentation and Mathematical Linguistics'' (a translation of the journal ''Научно-Tехническая Информация; Nauchno-Tekhnicheskaya Informatsiya)''. In 1989, Schreider moved to a permanent job at the Institute for Information Transmission Problems at the Russian Academy of Sciences. He taught at Moscow State University in the Mechanics and Mathematics Department and the Department of Structural and Applied Linguistics at the Faculty of Philology. He has published about 800 papers.

Conversion to Roman Catholicism

In 1970, Schreider was baptized in the

Roman Catholic Church The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

, an uncommon occurrence in the secular culture of the

. In 1977, he joined the

Third Order The term third order signifies, in general, lay members of Christian religious orders, who do not necessarily live in a religious community such as a monastery or a nunnery, and yet can claim to wear the religious habit and participate in the goo ...

of the

Dominican Order The Order of Preachers (, abbreviated OP), commonly known as the Dominican Order, is a Catholic Church, Catholic mendicant order of pontifical right that was founded in France by a Castilians, Castilian priest named Saint Dominic, Dominic de Gu ...

(Saint Dominic). In 1989 he became one of the organizers of the Catholic club "Spiritual Dialogue" and was elected its chairman. Since 1993 he was Academician-Secretary of the "Science and Theology" Department of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and chairman of the board of the Center of Philosophy, Psychology and Sociology of Religion. In 1991, Schreider became Professor of the College of Catholic Theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and in 1996 Professor of the Biblical Theological Institute of Saint Andrew in the city of Moscow, where he taught courses on "Ethics," "Social Doctrine of the Church", and "Logic and Epistemology", among others. He was received by

Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II (born Karol Józef Wojtyła; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 16 October 1978 until Death and funeral of Pope John Paul II, his death in 2005. In his you ...

From the memoirs of contemporaries

Julius Schreider's colleague at the Institute, V.B. Borschev recalled: "Oh it was legendary. He was a child prodigy, finishing school by the age of 14 and university in three years. While still at university, he came to Gelfand with a solution to the Continuum Problem. Gelfand found one small error, but the solution proposed by Schreider was interesting, and later became the basis of his doctoral dissertation. Schreider was admitted to graduate school despite massive antisemitism because one of the eminent professors insisted. After graduation, they still forced him out of the university despite a brilliant dissertation. Antisemitism, alas, has not gone away."

General information

Schreider wrote poetry exploring philosophical and theological themes. He was a friend of

Varlam Shalamov Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov (; 18 June 1907 – 17 January 1982), baptized as Varlaam, was a Russian writer, journalist, poet and Gulag survivor. He spent much of the period from 1937 to 1951 imprisoned in forced-labor camps in the Arctic reg ...

and corresponded with him regularly.

References

* Borschev, V.B., in the Collection of "Scientific and Technical Information", Series 2, № 8, 1999, 37–41. * Polotovskiy I.L., comp. Julius A. Schreider. Bibliographies. – M., 1997. –:, P. / 751 + positions + Author Index Subject Index Index + aliases. / * Polotovskiy IL All he wrote was bright, original, talented. / / Bibliografiya./zhurnal- 2002. – № 6. / + Bibliography / ;Specific

External links

* http://vborschev.narod.ru/schreider.htm * http://www.booksite.ru/fulltext/new/boo/ksh/ala/mov/88.htm * http://ru-math2.livejournal.com/26816.html

* https://web.archive.org/web/20070507062218/http://vivovoco.rsl.ru/VV/PAPERS/NATURE/SHREIDER.HTM {{DEFAULTSORT:Schrader, Julius Anatolyevich 1927 births 1998 deaths Converts to Roman Catholicism Converts to Roman Catholicism from atheism or agnosticism Russian Roman Catholics Russian Jews 20th-century Russian mathematicians