Prof. Lerner Holds Weekly Weizmann Institute Seminars in Moscow Home

The Soviet cybernetics expert Prof. Alexander Lerner, whom the USSR authorities have prevented from emigrating to Israel where a position awaits him at the Weizmann Institute of Science, is giving weekly cybernetics seminars on behalf of the Institute in his Moscow apartment. This was announced by Prof. Chaim L. Pekeris, head of the Institute’s Department of Applied Mathematics, who said that the participants in these seminars are experts in the field, most of whom studied under Prof. Lerner at the Moscow Institute of Control Sciences.

Prof. Lerner has also been asked to prepare reviews or syntheses of papers published in Soviet journals in his field of expertise. The Weizmann Institute will compensate him for all expenses incurred in this work and will provide an honorarium for the review articles received. They will be distributed to Israeli scientists and submitted for publication in important scientific, journals abroad.

Academician Keldysh, president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, has been informed of this arrangement and asked to ensure that Prof. Lerner and other Soviet Jewish scientists dismissed from their former posts at least be afforded the opportunity to utilize Soviet libraries in order to give them a meaningful occupation and provide the rest of the world with a greater knowledge of the important published contributions of Soviet scientists. Prof. Albert B. Sabin, outgoing president of the Weizmann Institute, last year offered positions at the Institute to Prof. Lerner, his son and his daughter, all of whom are applied mathematicians.