The father of the creator of Google told about the leveling in the US

Mathematics professor Mikhail Brin, the father of Google creator Sergey Brin, told the publication Jewish.ru about how his family came to the decision to emigrate, as well as about his son’s first steps towards creating an Internet giant.

Photo from the personal archive of Michael Brin

When moving to the United States, Mikhail had already achieved success and recognition in the field of mathematics, but the scientist said that from childhood he dreamed of becoming an astrophysicist, but in the USSR this specialty was not available to Jews.

“Astrophysics and astronomy in the USSR were taught at the physics department of Moscow State University, and if at the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics there were at least some quotas for Jews - yes, they were eliminated, they failed the exams, they were given special gas chamber problems, but it was still theoretically possible to get there - then Jews were simply not accepted into the physics department. Physics was a military science, and Jews were considered not trustworthy enough,” Brin explained.

Michael was not allowed to graduate school for all the same reasons of ethnic origin, and was sent to work at the Research Economic Institute at the USSR State Planning Committee as an analyst in the department of living standards.

“There I was doing statistical modeling. My task was to prove that the standard of living in the USSR was higher than the standard of living in the USA. I did this for nine years, until I was kicked out of work due to applying to leave for Israel,” the scientist said.

Despite the refusal to accept Breen in graduate school, he still managed to find a way to defend his thesis.

“In the USSR there was also such a form as a candidate for an academic degree. So I defended myself as an applicant. I wrote my dissertation in the evenings, after work,” he said.

According to him, by the time he left for the United States, he already had several publications in scientific journals, so he was known in science in Europe and in the USA, and therefore Bryn received an offer almost immediately to become a teacher at the University of Maryland.

He noted that problems with adaptation he almost did not have. Thanks to my mother, an English teacher, he knew the language perfectly, and the young scientist quickly became friends with her university colleagues.

Photo from the personal archive of Michael Brin

Mikhail said that his son Sergey was a very inquisitive child, and his parents left him a choice of a field of activity.

“I always left him freedom of choice, but at the same time made it clear that I was ready to help and answer his questions. As a child, he asked a lot of questions and listened to my explanations - sometimes for an entire hour. True, then the questions became fewer. And his patience to listen also decreased significantly, until it reached five minutes,” said the founder’s father Google.

According to Michael, the huge fortune earned by his son had no effect on him or his relatives.

“Though we are people, of course, well-to-do, but the main money is not ours. Know when Google just entered the market, Sergey was asked in an interview: “Many of your employees have become millionaires. How did this affect them? ” To which he replied: “One of our employees always had different socks - he could never find a pair. Now he bought himself a few pairs. ” They live here all modestly. In general, Sergey and his partner, when they created Google were ready to sell the company for $20 million and do something else. It’s just that no one wanted to buy the company from them,” said Brin.

Mikhail believes that big money leads to an increase in responsibility, because their owner understands that by investing a substantial amount in some business, he can have a strong influence on this project, therefore he always thinks about the correctness of the investment.

According to him, neither he nor Sergey Brin ever invested money in politics.

“I personally don’t give money to politicians. And as far as I know, Sergei too. I believe that politicians are not fulfilling their role - they are mainly interested in getting re-elected,” Mikhail said.

He noted that the richest 1% of people in the United States are “the elite that drives progress,” and these people need special conditions, at least in education.

“There is too much leveling now, where teaching is for the average or slow. There are not enough conditions for the development of talented people. I’m not against equality; it was probably necessary to create conditions for learning for both average and lagging behind, but not at the expense of developing talented ones. You know, Sergei came to me after the tenth grade and said that he was bored at school. For the next two years until the end of the twelfth grade, he simply has nothing to learn - he has already learned all school mathematics and physics. I went to school with him and asked the teachers what subjects he would learn in these two years? We were told that American history and household economics. One of the consequences of this leveling is the uneven development of technology that we observe. We see great progress in the computer field, but in other areas there is much less progress. And in any case, the progress in them is not so revolutionary. Yes, planes are now faster and more economical, cars are of better quality, but in general we fly and drive exactly the same as seventy years ago,” noted Mikhail Brin.

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