Talk by David Gamarnik

David Gamarnik, Assistant Professor at the Sloan School of Management at MIT, came to the US in 1990 from Tbilisi. He has always had an absolute love of mathematics, and then when he came to MIT, that love has developed into the love of research for research’s sake. At the same time, David Gamarnik is drawn to the imaginative possibilities of theater. He is a leading actor at one of Boston’s Russian Theater Troupe Arlekin Players, where he performs to admiring audience for many years. As Maksudov in Bulgakov’s “Dead Man’s Diary” David Gamarnik brilliantly channels the spirit of a struggling writer, vividly demonstrating his character’s clumsy personality via rich body language, varied facial expressions, and modulated inflections. David has maintained that acting and theater training have certainly given him more confidence and creativity in everything he does.

Part I

Summary

David explores the topic “we were born strangers,” and how it applies to him. Although he is a Russian immigrant living in the US, his life as an immigrant actually started long before. His family, which is Russian, was living in Georgia when he was born. His parents and grandparents only spoke Russian, and maintained their Russian culture. Even the school he attended operated in Russian. This all stemmed from a culture in the USSR of “All are equal, but Russians are first among equals.” This ethno-nationalism made Georgia a complicated place to grow up for a young Russian, add to the already complicated situation of being raised surrounded by an unknown language and an unfamiliar culture. — Joe

Part 2

Summary

David discusses challenges the émigré faces arriving in a new country and trying to get his foot in the door. More specifically he is talking of what career opportunities and educational backgrounds combine (or not) in emigration, and which careers do not translate well. He describes a hypothetical scenario of an immigrant arriving in Germany, and trying to start a government career. He says that of course formally, the immigrant would be treated well there, it would simply be difficult and take time to learn the German culture and the psychology of people who grew up in this country really well to build up cultural relationships. Because of that, David grew an interest in fields where values and qualities could be easily transmitted between individuals.

 

So he chose mathematics. At that time, he was interested in abstract math, or pure mathematics. The more abstract the more interesting. After discovering that no one in the audience was a student of mathematics, he explained that people pursue different fields of mathematics and different degrees. For example, algebra, or statistics. For him, abstract math  was attractive because one was able to pursue and be surrounded by what was interesting, because it was always a boundary-pushing field.

 

After he emigrated to America, however, he began finding the opposite more interesting. He began wanting to study areas of mathematics that were more research based, also known as operations research. For example, how GPS and satellite tracking worked, and developing algorithms that tracked movements precisely. –Joe