Nichols, Alice

Orbiting in Eccentric Circles : A Family History

In this memoir, Alice Rainich Nichols relates a lifetime of family lore and experience, sharing tales of her father, world-renowned mathematician Yuri Germanovich Rabinovich/G Y Rainich; her mother Sophie, born into luxury and destined to become a long-suffering university wife; and Babushka, the Russian-born grandmother who brought a box of mysterious pictures for seven-year-old Alice from an far away uncle, revealing a world of new horizons to the little girl from Michigan. Along the way, we meet a ple- thora of brilliant and absent-minded professors, wandering mathematical geniuses, oddball neighbors and colleagues, and the flamboyantly self-important Count Korzybski.