Today's guest is the mathematician Edward Frankel.

His story takes him from climbing fences and sneaking into math lectures at a Moscow university,

all the way to the hallowed blackboards of Berkeley.

It's the sort of story that one might write a book about.

In fact, Edward has written a book about it.

And today, he's sharing the journey with us.

Where were you born in the world?

Not America, I'm guessing from your accent.

Yes, you're guessing right. I was born in Russia, the Soviet Union at the time.

Soviet Union at the time. Whereabouts? Is it a place I will have heard of? A little town called

Colomna. Columna. Columna. Where is that? Near Moscow. Like how far out? Like, you know,

117 kilometers.

You can Google how many miles that is.

I guess about 70 miles.

One of the good things about growing up in the Soviet Union was that science was highly respected.

And in particular, you could find books, popular books about science in the bookstores. And so that was something that really excited me as a kid, as a teenager.

I was reading mostly about physics.

I was really excited about quantum physics, things like elementary particles and forces of nature and the universe.

And there were lots of books. Some of them were translations, but some of them were local by Russian-Soviet authors, and they were quite good.

What was it about the culture of the country at the time that would have made science so revered?

Well, two reasons.

First of all, the nuclear bomb and research related to that as well as space exploration.

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