Andrei Nikolaevich Kolmogorov

The name of Andrei Nikolaevich Kolmogorov is dear to very many mathematicians who, in one way or another, felt the influence of this remarkable person during the more than sixty years of his research activity. A. N. Kolmogorov is the author of classical results in many branches of mathematics and in contemporary science in general. It is widely acknowledged that he was one of the most outstanding scientists of the 20th century.
The year 2003 was the centenary of the birth of Kolmogorov. A major international conference, “Kolmogorov and Contemporary Mathematics”, was dedicated to this event. There were over 1000 participants. The conference programme consisted of talks related to the fields in which Kolmogorov worked.
The conference took place at Moscow State University. Kolmogorov worked at that university throughout his life, as a student and subsequently as a professor in the Mechanics and Mathematics Department. Here he delivered his first talks about many of his remarkable discoveries. Here he founded a unique scientific school of mathematicians who took their first steps in research under his supervision and subsequently became prominent researchers and founders of their own schools.
Kolmogorov was one of the founders of the journal “Uspekhi Matematicheskih Nauk”, and its chief editor from 1946 until 1955 and again from 1983 until 1987.
The editorial board has dedicated this and the next issue to A. N. Kolmogorov. This first issue starts with a paper from his files supplied to the editorial board by A. N. Shiryaev. Kolmogorov had prepared it for publication, but for reasons unknown it was not published. The issue is composed mainly of the texts of talks delivered by invited speakers at the conference. This part opens with the paper of A. G. Vitushkin, who was the Kolmogorov Prize laureate for 2003, the award being made to him at the start of the conference.