Between Portuguese and Russian, Misha prefers numbers.

Luiza Barata

In the classroom, Mikhail Verbitsky usually speaks in English about the “various geometries” he researches. But since his first visit to Brazil in 2010, he has been studying Portuguese and enjoys practicing the language. “I don’t find it that difficult.” For him, the linguistic challenge is different. “I find French more complicated… or Russian. Russian is much more difficult than Portuguese,” jokes the researcher, whose native tongue is the dreaded language. For Mikhail, better known as Misha, dealing with countless mathematical calculations is easy. It is among numbers, calculations, and geometric measurements that he likes to work.

Misha likes to listen to Russian music to try and bridge the distance between Moscow, where he grew up, and Rio de Janeiro. “I like listening to a more underground sound from Russia, something like cyberpunk industrial. That doesn't have so much to do with punk itself,” he distinguishes with the air of an expert on the subject. “It's more on the industrial side of music. I also listen to apocalypse folk ,” reveals the researcher who even managed to combine academia with the independent record label he created. “Right after getting my doctorate, I didn't have a steady job. I developed the label to promote bands that were outside the mainstream and to earn some extra money.”

Not even the adverse times for research made him give up on his mathematical path. Misha grew up watching his parents dedicate themselves to academic teaching. An only child, he lived with his mother, Seraphina, and his father, Sergei, surrounded by physics and chemistry articles. At the age of twelve, he became a student at Moscow School Number 57. “The anti-Soviet influence was very strong, which meant that the government didn't invest much in education. But the place is a benchmark and continues to be so today. The school is officially public, but it needs private resources to exist.”

During the four years he studied there, Misha saw his interest in a scientific field he didn't yet have at home, mathematics, begin to take shape. “This wasn't immediate because in the Soviet Union (USSR) we didn't have many options for a mathematician to work. At that time, you had to be a member of the Young Communist Union to practice the profession in the research field. Even so, I found a way to pursue the career.”

At the end of the 1980s, the researcher began to trace his first academic impressions, with scientific results on a more refined area of geometry. Misha proved the use of Torelli's global theorem for hyperkähler manifolds and the mirror conjecture in the hyperkähler case, topics that he explored in depth throughout his academic years.

To pursue new opportunities, he earned a degree in Mathematics from the Moscow Independent University (IUM), where he remains a member and has held various academic positions since 1996. “It was necessary to leave Russia. Since I didn't want to associate myself with the academic groups that existed there at the time, I sought opportunities abroad.”

Accompanied by their parents, the three formed a kind of team of traveling scientists. They went to the United States, where Misha spent two years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a researcher. Later, he earned a doctorate in Mathematics from Harvard University. The final result was the thesis " Cohomology of hyperkahler manifolds ," a collaboration with the Soviet professor David Kazhdan, a world reference in representation theory.

In total, the mathematician spent almost seven years in the US. During this period, he also worked as a collaborator at the research center where Albert Einstein was one of his first professors, the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton. “What I liked most about the United States was the contact with intellectuals, with people from different countries. But I rejected their policy of privatizing everything, especially the area of education.”

It was also in the United States that Misha began venturing into the internet. “When I was in the US, I wanted to learn about Russia online and I started using it. Some time later, I had several projects on the internet that had nothing to do with mathematics. I wrote about music, politics, and poetry.”

Back in Russia, the family found a socio-political landscape different from when they had left the country. The global situation was different: the USSR had ended some years before, but the lack of jobs was still a challenge. “I thought I would have something I could do for my country, but I didn’t. I received more money for writing about politics than for working as a researcher. In research, my salary was practically twenty dollars a month.”

To try and overcome the economic chaos, the mathematician combined his research position at IUM with posts at other universities where he worked. “I lived in two countries simultaneously for a few years. I maintained my stay in Russia and combined it with periods at universities in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.” He also worked at the prestigious University of Glasgow in Scotland, where he lived for seven years.

Of all the countries he has visited, Misha finds it difficult to decide which one he liked the most. “All countries have their ups and downs. It’s complicated to compare…”, he dodges. “I really like Brazil, but I haven’t seen everything yet.” The Russian mathematician’s relationship with Brazil began in 2011. After being accepted into a FAPESP academic scholarship program, he started visiting Unicamp for research. “I really enjoyed seeing the graffiti on the streets of São Paulo and in the parks.” Around the same time, he made a quick trip to Rio de Janeiro, where he visited IMPA.

Misha may not be able to say which country he liked being in more, but between the two Brazilian states, he quickly admits: "I like Rio more because of the beaches." In 2017, he was approved to join the faculty of IMPA, where he has worked ever since. The researcher works with symplectic geometry, the geometry of hyperkähler structures, Kähler manifolds, and quaternions.

The more than 11,000 kilometers that separate the Russian capital from Rio do not diminish the pride Misha feels for his four children. Not even the nearly seventeen-hour flight prevents him from following the development of Seraphina, Alexei, Maria, and the youngest, Victor.

“They all have a connection to mathematics, but only my eldest daughter, Seraphina, has publications in the field. She is a neuroscientist and biologist. Alexei is a game designer . Maria, 19, studies mathematics at university, and Victor, 15, is still in school.” Since the younger ones don't work yet, they are able to visit their father. The young people usually come to Brazil when they are on vacation and going to the beach is their favorite activity.

A resident of Copacabana, Misha sees no similarities between his life in Rio and the environment where he lived in Russia. On this point, the researcher is emphatic: “Brazil and Russia have nothing in common. They are both in BRICS, and that's the only thing I see in common,” he concludes.