Опубликовано: 19.01.2025. 23:50
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Life is certainly longer than any interview.
Angelo Mingarelli can be attributed to that not very large cohort of human society that, being able to respond to the humanistic needs of the current day, strives and is able to change it.
We know that you can be educated without being smart, you can be successful without being productive, but you can be young, not stop when you are already more than 70 years old and be serious without taking yourself seriously, continue to admire the world around you, teach and learn all your life ..
All this - a 73-year-old professor of mathematics at Carleton University in Ottawa, a trade union leader, president of CUASA and founder of SAR Carleton (Scholars at Risk) a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (2012), a former director of the School of Mathematics and Statistics at Carleton University, winner of the Study Sphere Award for Excellence in Online Teaching and a nominee for the OCUFA Teaching Award, as well as an activist, an aesthete, an expert on the works of Leonardo da Vinci, a traveler, a father who raised seven successful children and hundreds of students around the world, a patron of Iranian and Afghan feminists willing to dive into the depths of mathematics, and also a great lover of carbonara pasta and pizza. He is very diverse and therefore any attempt to present him in any one color is initially doomed to failure.
For example, physically he is at Carleton University in Ottawa at a lecture or in his home office at the monitor, but a few hours later he appears virtually in Iran, Ukraine or Afghanistan, where he teaches students mathematical analysis online.
Here he gives shelter in his home to scholars-scholars from the Scholars at Risk program, who were forced to leave their homes due to the war and ended up in Canada, until they find permanent housing.
Or in the evening, after classes, he rushes to the next event as a trade union activist on Parliament Hill, where Iranian and Afghan activists are protesting against the war at the Eternal Flame monument, a symbol of the unity of all 10 Canadian provinces. Or the next day - he supports the Ukrainian diaspora protesting against Russian aggression near the Russian embassy in Ottawa.
But on other evenings he can write a script for a future play about Leonardo da Vinci, and in order to finish it, he flies to France, where the Italian genius spent the last years of his life.
And then he hurries to his art studio in Ottawa, where he tries to draw or paint something himself...
Sometimes on weekends he goes to his native Montreal in Quebec, where he spent his childhood and youth, to celebrate the New Year or birthdays with his family, or flies to the USA to meet his daughter Chiara Mingarelli, an astrophysicist, a professor of physics at Yale University in the USA, a specialist in cosmic "black holes" (in 2024 she was recognized as one of the "most influential female scientists" in the USA). He will discuss with her the noise of black hole mergers, recorded in a single curve.
Perhaps now he will be able to tell at least that little that we usually manage to tell about ourselves in short media interviews.
- Angelo, there was a recent panel discussion about Ken Burns' film "Inside the Mind of a Genius: Leonardo da Vinci". What kind of film is it? Did the audience find it interesting? Also, I know you're very interested in Da Vinci and have even agreed to write a script about him?
- The thing is, the day before, a friend of mine from the Italian community called and said that the trailers for this new 4-hour Ken Burns film called "Inside the Mind of a Genius: Leonardo da Vinci" were going to be shown soon and that they needed someone to moderate a Q&A session between episodes. So she asked me if I wanted to do it. And I agreed. There were only about 40 people expected, but 90-100 showed up, people were standing everywhere, and the room was quite small. Each trailer was about 20-30 minutes long with an intermission in between. I answered all sorts of questions about Leonardo and comments between the pauses in the trailers. In the end, I found the movie quite interesting, but I think many important parts of his life were left behind the scenes. For me, Leonardo is a great man and scientist, somewhat of an unsolved mystery and perhaps I have unconsciously tried to imitate him since childhood…
I have often wondered - what was he like in real life? Sources say different things... I personally think that he was a very charismatic and handsome man, tall and strong. I imagine him as quite active, with a fast speech. I often introduce my students to some of Leonardo da Vinci's works in my math classes. For example, when we talk about integral calculus, you need to know that there are several sketches in one of his notebooks where he uses calculation methods that were developed only 200 years later. Leonardo is, of course, better known as an artist. But few people know that he created most of his later works using mathematical calculations, including the use of perspective. It was he who invented the "sfumato" technique, which allowed him to mix colors almost seamlessly, but before that he studied the drawing techniques of all the great Italian masters who worked before him - Brunelleschi, Masaccio, Giotto, Cimabue...
- What does it mean to be Italian? For me it’s more than where you were born, but how do you think? And how do you perceive the world around you, and this concerns your culture and how it makes you who you are.
- I mean, our culture is represented by such great minds as, for example, Virgil, Dante, Leonardo da Vinci... So we, “Italians”, should try to imitate them.
- Three events in your life that were decisive for your future destiny...
- There are many, but besides the influence of my family and my brother Marco in particular, I would include my meeting with a childhood friend named Mario, during my school days, he was a mathematical genius. He filled in all the gaps in my knowledge of mathematics.
The second event was winning the so-called “NRC 1967 Science Scholarship”, which I used to study for a PhD at the University of Toronto, with all my expenses paid for a four-year period. This was crucial because without this scholarship I would not have been able to attend graduate school. After all, my father, who was then a newspaper editor, could not afford to send me to Toronto.
So without this scholarship I would never have been able to become the person I became. Indeed, there are many, many happy moments in my life, and I try to interpret most events, even unhappy ones, as happy. I have to remain positive and optimistic, no matter what happens on the surface. There is always something good in everything that happens... Having seven children has been a huge source of happiness and even growth for me. Their presence and interactions have made me grow in unexpected ways, and they have shaped me into who I am. I have taught them to think critically…
As a result, my daughters work in very different fields: one is the interim marketing director for a large Canadian law firm,another is an assistant professor of physics at Yale University in the US, a third is the CEO of a Canadian-American software company, and the fourth is a licensed veterinarian currently working on a PhD in physiology at McGill University. My sons are also very active: one teaches Latin and Ancient Greek at the University of Ottawa, one works for Intact Insurance in Toronto (and speaks fluent Mandarin!), and one is a forest firefighter and paramedic in British Columbia. I am so proud of them all!
But back to my youth. Winning the 1967 fellowship I mentioned earlier was a very important moment, and then winning an NSERC University Research Fellowship at a time when I had two small children and was working as a contract instructor was another. During that period, I was probably the luckiest person ever, because it led to tenure at the University of Ottawa and then tenure at Carleton. The saddest events were the deaths of my parents and my grandparents. They were all very special, I was lucky to have them.
- And yet you are an ethnic Italian who lived most of his life in Canada, which is multicultural and remains so today. And today's world is changing towards an ever greater gravitation towards ethnonational identities, our world is "moving to the right". To a large extent, this is being pushed towards by the global crisis, as well as today's wars. Is there such a thing as an Italian character? Was it difficult or easy for you to maintain your Italian character in Canada? You live in Ottawa in a neighborhood called Little Itali. Do you feel more comfortable that way, or is it just a coincidence?
- My parents came from Italy shortly after the end of World War II. They came with my brother, who was only three years old at the time. I was born and raised in Montreal, first in the area that is now called Plateau Mont Royal. It was very difficult for my family then, because they spoke neither French nor English, being native Italian speakers. But my paternal grandparents lived in the area, so that helped. At first, my father sold hot dogs at a stand for a contractor on Boul. St. Laurent, but eventually got a job as a foreign correspondent for an Italian daily newspaper based in New York City, as he had already a career as a journalist in Italy. We moved to Little Italy in downtown Montreal (near what is now the Jean-Talon metro station).
I spent most of my youth there from the age of 3 to 21. I must admit that as I grew up, I realized that being Italian in another country was not easy. Even though I was surrounded by Italians, my friends were mostly French Canadians with a few Italians in between. There was a lot of discrimination and “racism”, as it is very common among children. Yes, they were my friends, but they called me names and so on.
I guess you just get used to it when you are a child. But somehow I managed to overcome all of this, because there was no choice! Sometimes, even now, I find it difficult, I mean, being Italian in Canada. I wonder if my life would have been completely different if my name had not been completely Italian? I knew people in my neighborhood who actually changed their names to more French-sounding or English-sounding names. But then, eventually, I began to be proud of being Italian, and as an adult, I realized that I was very grateful to my father, who insisted that my brother and I always speak Italian at home. I was also sent to a French school, so by the time I graduated from high school, I was trilingual.
- Science... Your interest in art is often based on an unusual approach - "physical and mathematical", and on your Facebook page I see a lot of links to famous female scientists who have succeeded in the exact sciences. You often quote them. By the way, what sayings do you follow in your life? And which of these female scientists occupy a special place in your life and teaching?
- Yes, you are right, there are many female scientists on my Facebook/Instagram page.
It is difficult to answer which of them is the most important for me, since they are all my good
friends, some are even my children. I know some better than others, but they are all very good in their fields of knowledge.
I have always admired women who know how to overcome. As a follower of science and above all a mathematician, my gaze has always been riveted to the servants of this muse.
For example, Sophie Germain, Sofia Kovalevskaya, Mary Kenneth Keller, the first woman to receive a PhD in computer science in the United States, 1965, Gigliola Staffilani, the second woman in history and the first Italian in history to hold the role of full professor of pure mathematics at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Or Amalia Emmy Noether (March 23, 1882 – April 14, 1935) was a German mathematician who made many important contributions to abstract algebra. She proved the first and second Noether theorems, which are fundamental in mathematical physics. She was admired by Pavel Alexandrov, Albert Einstein, Jean Dieudonné, Hermann Weyl and Norbert Wiener, who described her as the most important woman in the history of mathematics. As one of the leading mathematicians of her time, she developed theories of rings, fields and algebras. In physics, Noether's theorem explains the relationship between symmetry and conservation laws. Even in the early modern era, a few women had real scientific careers, such as the Frenchwoman Emilie du Châtelet (1706-1749), who translated Newton and disseminated Leibniz’s work in her country. Laura Bassi (1711-1778) from Bologna was the first woman to receive a doctorate and a university chair in a scientific field. Sophie Germain, on the other hand, was never fully integrated into the scientific community, but that did not stop her from making contributions to the development of mathematics and science. Sophie Germain was largely self-taught, but was awarded the Grand Prix of the Paris Academy of Sciences for her pioneering work on elasticity theory. Three important words come to mind: “Dream, Believe, and Think.” You can find these words scattered around my living room. One of my credos is “Take care of your own needs,” and I really try to live by that. Another is “Do your best.” It doesn't matter if you fail, just do it. And "Strive for excellence!"
- In that case, I want to ask you now about your human rights work, which includes work with Afghan women and women from Iran.
- First, I should emphasize that my human rights work began about 50 years ago, when I intervened in the unfair dismissal of a mathematics professor at Loyola College in Montreal. Then, in the mid-to-late 1970s, I was involved in many political activities at UofT, activities that included the campaign to free Orlov and Sharansky, the Massera campaign, etc., and the plight of the so-called “refuseniks” from the Soviet Union. As a junior professor, I then founded the Ottawa chapter of Science for Peace, still based in Toronto, and called for the creation of an Ottawa chapter of Amnesty International. There are many, many other human rights-related activities I could include, but that’s a very long story.
At some point in my life, I decided that I needed to fight gender bias and gender apartheid. Seeing that my daughters had received an incredible education and were well-adjusted, it occurred to me that among the many places in the world where women were actually oppressed, one could find Iran and Afghanistan, ruled by theocracies. So I thought I should work with organizations that were seeking to eliminate such injustices in these countries. As a result, I made the decision that all of my graduate students would be from Iran and/or Afghanistan.
I felt that women there needed to pursue any educational opportunities, I needed to take action, even if I was alone.
I have always told my daughters since they were little that they live in a male-dominated world, but that this fact should never deter them from pursuing their dreams, no matter how ambitious, as I will support them.
- I know that Mingarelli's first-year calculus class will have 50 to 100 students. "They'll hear my voice; they'll see me teach; they'll take notes, and we'll move on." And that you'd like to expand the class to 10,000 students, "if the servers can handle it." Is that true?
- The pandemic was a terrible time in human history, but it actually revolutionized learning thanks to the rise of digital technology. But my course materials will now be useful to women in Afghanistan who are "stuck at home," as people have been during the COVID-19 crisis.
One more thing: the women who came to work under me brought their families with them, if possible. It's hard for women to get out of Afghanistan, so teaching Afghan women is more realistic online.
But there is another major challenge: in Afghanistan, the internet is sometimes very slow or not working at all, so it is difficult to hold classes at a fixed time that works for everyone. Right now, registered students at least have access to a free copy of my book and access to my Zoom classes since the pandemic. Soon I will be holding online office hours at a fixed time.
I can say that we know what to do administratively; educationally, but it is very important to interact with these women - they have to ask questions live; they have to see the look in their eyes and the passion for the subject.
But equally important for these women who complete the course and pass the exam is to receive “micro-credits” that are recognized by Carleton University and other institutions. This can be complicated by the fact that students will not technically be registered, will not be able to pay tuition, or attend classes on the Carleton server. So the university must have some credibility, in the worst case I will write a certificate for each of the women who take my course.
Yes, I am very concerned that girls and women from Afghanistan will be disappointed by the lack of career opportunities. But I hope that these students will have their eyes opened and realize that they are not alone. And they will say, “Okay, there is a world that we can join at some point.” I would love to see Carleton offer some free scholarships to Afghan women so that they can come to Canada and continue their education here.
- I know that Carleton University has also, over the last few years, accepted about twenty scholars from around the world, from “hot spots,” mostly those who were forced to flee war or regimes or systems. The program is called “Scholars at Risk.” These scholars receive fellowships here and are allowed to continue their research for the next two years.
- Yes, that’s right. Let me tell you a little bit about my union activities... I was a union leader at Carleton University and at the University of Ottawa for a total of 18 years. At Carleton, I was on the board of the Carleton University Academic Staff Association (CUASA), which is the main union representing tenured professors and academic staff, which includes professional librarians and CUASA instructors. I was there for a total of 15 years, and I was president of CUASA for six of those years. During my second term as president, from 2012 to 2014, I heard about Scholars at Risk (SAR) at a CAUT (i.e. Canadian Association of University Teachers) meeting. During that conference, the executive director at the time mentioned that SAR (based in New York) was looking to open more chapters in Canada. I think there were only two SAR chapters in Canada at the time. My colleague from Carleton, Poom van Veldhoven, a sociologist, was with me at CAUT, and I thought it would be a good idea to raise the issue with our union leadership.
Eventually, the leadership agreed that it would be a good project for our union. So we agreed to send Poom on a fact-finding mission to the SAR meeting in Toronto in 2012. Around the same time, I met Melanie Adrian from Carleton University’s Law and Legal Studies at the spring conference, and she expressed a keen interest in SAR. However, there was a lot of pushback from union members at the time, as the mission was generally considered to be unrelated to union activities. Eventually, during the 2012-13 year (under my chairmanship), after numerous calls to the administration asking for help in getting the SAR program off the ground, the university agreed to host a SAR program that would be jointly run with CUASA. Melanie became the first official chair of the SAR committee. I also chaired the committee for a year while Melanie was on leave, and that same year brought in the IIE Scholar Rescue Fund as a sponsor. Through CUASA, I also pitched the idea of a jointly sponsored CUASA/Carleton research grant for visiting scholars. This was also approved.
- A significant part of your life is connected with Canada. Although, having lived here for several years, I, for example, see a striking difference in the opportunities that Canadian teachers who have achieved academic degrees have. Once every eight years, a scientist here receives the so-called Sabbatical, a paid creative leave and can go and live in any country in the world. You worked as a visiting professor at universities in France, Italy, Spain, Australia, America. This gives a huge chance, an impetus for development.
- Yes, I periodically worked as a visiting professor at various universities around the world - at the Turin Polytechnic University (Italy), Princeton University (New Jersey, USA), the University of Perpignan (France), the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, the University of Sydney (Australia).
