Русские в британских университетах. Опыт интеллектуальной истории и культурного обмена - стр. 5

In 1924 Abram Samoilovitch Besicovitch left Russia, and after working for a year in Denmark came to England, where with the support of the eminent mathematician G. H. Hardy he made his way to Cambridge, and in 1927 became a University Lecturer, succeeding to the prestigious Rouse Ball Professorship in Mathematics in 1950. Three years after his arrival in Cambridge he was elected to a Fellowship at Trinity College, where he remained as a much-loved figure for the next 40 years. One characteristic that he retained to the end of his days was a firm refusal to admit to the existence of the definite article in the English language, and it is said that during one of his lectures an undergraduate tittered at its persistent absence. “Gentlemen”, said Besicovitch, “there are fifty million Englishmen speak English you speak; but there are five hundred million Russians speak English I speak”. The tittering quickly stopped. Well do I remember the passionate speech that I heard him make in 1949 defending an aged avenue of lime trees at a meeting of the Fellows in Trinity, when he considered that his juniors were overhasty in wanting them to be replaced. He always felt strongly about the state of the College gardens, and during the 1939–1945 war when gardeners were in short supply he was regularly to be seen helping to cut the grass in the courts with a small hand mower. It was typical of his thoughtfulness that on his death in 1970 he made bequests to all of the bed makers who had looked after him when he lived in Trinity.

It was in 1938 when we were both undergraduates at Trinity that I first met Dimitri Dimitrievich Obolensky. He had been educated partly in France and partly in England, and differed in one respect from the other Russians on my list in speaking an elegant English that could not be faulted. He became a leading authority on the mediaeval history of Eastern Europe, and particularly on religious and cultural problems. After graduating brilliantly, he was briefly a lecturer in Russian in Cambridge, but in 1950 he was attracted to Oxford by a Readership. There he remained for the rest of his life as a Student (Fellow) of Christchurch, in due course with a personal Professorship in the University. But it was a pleasure to see him occasionally in Trinity, which made him an Honorary Fellow in 1991.

The academic distinction that all these Russians brought to Cambridge in such varied fields goes without saying, but what in my experience united them all was their outstanding friendliness and charm. We greatly look forward to seeing more of them in the future».