Florentin Smarandache
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Florentin Smarandache (born December 10, 1954) is a Romanian-American associate professor at a two-year college in New Mexico.
Florentin_Smarandache.jpg
Smarandache was born in Bălceşti, in the Romanian district of Vâlcea. According to autobiographical writings he has provided on various websites, in 1986 he was refused an exit visa by the Ceaucescu regime that would have allowed him to attend the ICM held in Berkeley, California; in 1988 he fled from Romania leaving behind his son and pregnant wife; in 1990 after two years in refugee camps in Turkey, he emigrated to the United States. He was employed at Honeywell's facility in Phoenix, Arizona from 1990 to 1995 and was an adjunct professor at Pima Community College in Tucson from 1995 to 1997. He was granted a doctorate in mathematics from the State University of Chişinău, Moldova, in 1997 ([1] (http://www.ad-astra.ro/whoswho/view_profile.php?user_id=91), [2] (http://www.agonia.net/index.php/essay/63772/?newlang=deu)). Since 1997 he has been an assistant professor of Mathematics and Science at the University of New Mexico, Gallup branch [3] (http://www1.gallup.unm.edu/academicdepts/).
Smarandache has written copiously on what appears to be an enormous range of topics; however, the value of his work is hard to evaluate, since it has appeared mainly in non-peer reviewed channels such as the ArXiv.org e-print archive or in a few journals whose editorial board appears to be associated to Smarandache in some way and whose academic reputation is not well-known. Similarly, his artistic and literary work appears to have little recognition outside of a small number of devotees.
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Writings
Smarandache has published material classified diversely as poems, novels, dramas and fiction in Romanian, French, and English. His literary and philosophical writings are generally seen as illogical, a characteristic which he and his followers describe as paradoxical; indeed, Smarandache describes himself as a "leader of paradoxism". He claims to invented a new idiosyncratic approach to dialectics he calls neutrosophy. For instance, neutrosophic sets appear to be a generalization of fuzzy sets, in which a third possibility between membership and non-membership in a set (indeterminateness) is allowed.
In mathematics, he has written material under the rubric of number theory and statistics, none of which has been distributed by a publisher with an acknowledged academic reputation. Among these is a book listing new and unsolved problems in number theory, most of them about sequences he defined. A typical example is the sequence 1, 11, 112, 1123, 11235, ... with the n-th entry obtained by concatenating the base ten digit expansions of the first n Fibonacci numbers. He is sometimes credited with having introduced the so-called "Smarandache function" S(n), defined as the smallest number such that n divides S(n)!. However, this function had already been studied by E. Lucas and J. Neuberg in the 1880s and by A. Kempner in 1918.
As of November 27, 2004 Bowker's Books in Print [4] (http://www.booksinprint.com) lists 134 published titles under the name Florentin Smarandache . Of these all but three of them are published by Books on Demand and by American Research Press, a small publisher which gives as contact its address in Reheboth, New Mexico. Of the remaining three, two were published by Zayu Press and one by Bristol Banner Books. Some of the listed books were anthologies of stories including works of other writers.
The Smarandache Notions Journal (formerly known as Smarandache Functions Journal) is also published by American Research Press. The Smarandache Functions Journal and the American Research Press both give as their web page the home page of Smarandache at the University of New Mexico, Gallup.
Smarandache was the sole organizer of the First International Conference on Neutrosophy, Neutrosophic Logic, Set, Probability and Statistics apparently held on December 1-3, 2001, at the University of New Mexico in Gallup, where Smarandache has a teaching position. The conference accepted 27 papers, of which 18 were submitted by Smarandache himself, according to the official website of the conference [5] (http://atlas-conferences.com/c/a/g/u/01.htm) (mantained by a conference services company [6] (http://atlas-conferences.com/)); it should be noted that this list of presentations is different from that given by the proceedings available at Smarandache's website.
Followers
A number of individuals have written papers on Smarandache notions such as Minh Perez (American Research Press) and Charles T. Le (who gives his affiliation as University of Arizona, Tempe).
Charles Ashbacher, currently president of Charles Ashbacher Technologies, an author on object-oriented technology [7] (http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/a/Ashbacher:Charles.html) and a member of the adjunct faculty of Mount Mercy College [8] (http://www2.mtmercy.edu/academicsdir/math/whotalk.html) has written various articles on "Smarandache problems" in the Journal of Recreational Mathematics of which he is also editor ([9] (http://www.baywood.com/journals/PreviewJournals.asp?Id=0022-412x), [10] (http://mathforum.org/library/view/17371.html)). The Journal of Recreational Mathematics is published by Baywood Publishing Company of Amityville, NY, and is primarily devoted to mathematical games and puzzles for grades 9 — 12. One such book, Pluckings from the Tree of Smarandache Sequences and Functions (American Research Press, 1998) was reviewed by the Mathematical Association of America [11] (http://www.maa.org/reviews/brief_may00.html). According to the reviewer, in the book "There are a few theorems, but mostly there are questions, conjectures, and examples. Most of the mysteries being studied remain mysterious."
Outer-Art
Outer-Art is a term invented by Smarandache in the 1990s. He proposed creating the least artistic thing and calling it artwork. According to his manifesto:
- The Outer-Art movement means to make art as ugly as possible, as wrong as possible, or as bad as possible... and, generally speaking, as impossible as possible!
Smarandache Geometry
Smarandache defined a type of geometrical structure which some have called called "Smarandache geometries". Smarandache geometries are non-Euclidean, and sometimes partially Euclidian and partially non-Euclidean, geometries. They have at least one axiom which behaves in at least two different ways within the same space (validated and invalided, or only invalidated but in multiple distinct ways).
Howard Iseri constructed a model on a 2D-manifold for a particular such geometry, where Euclid's fifth postulate is replaced by various statements within the same geometric space.
See also
External links
- Profile of Florentin Smarandache (http://www.ad-astra.ro/whoswho/view_profile.php?user_id=91&lang=en) This profile was written by himself on the Ad Astra online project for the Romanian Scientific community. The information concerning Smarandache's leaving Romania comes from this source.
- American Research Press books (http://www.publishingonline.com/en/publisher/publisher_page.jhtml?id=1430086)
- Home page of Florentin Smarandache (http://www.gallup.unm.edu/~smarandache/), identical with home page of the Smarandache Notions Journal
- Outer-art (http://www.gallup.unm.edu/~smarandache/outer-art.htm) An online gallery of paintings and photographs by Smarandache.
- mini-bio (http://www.allexperts.com/previousqv.asp?QuestionID=1742899) from allexperts.com
- Published books (http://www.addall.com/Browse/Author/2247349-1) (from addall.com)
- Out of Print books (http://wwwlib.umi.com/bod/search/basic) (from ProQuest books on demand)de:Florentin Smarandache
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