Czech Scholars in Exile, 1948–1989

Abstract

The mobility of scholars is one of the significant social phenomena affecting scientific development. The mass exodus of intellectual elites from countries dominated by totalitarian regimes, however, represents a specific type of unwanted mobility or ‘forced migration’, which generally leads to devastating cultural and social damage over several generations. The historical experience of Czechoslovakia's waves of exile between 1918 and 1989 provides a suitable case for research into scientific exile in its varied forms. This chapter focuses on the escape of scholars from Czechoslovakia in the years between 1948 and 1989, when the country was part of the Soviet power bloc.

Smooth Analysis of the Condition Number and the Least Singular Value

“…, xn are iid with law equal to that of x conditioned to the event |x| ≪ n γ . As x has mean zero and bounded second moment, one verifies from (13) and Cauchy-Schwarz that the mean of the xi is O(n −(A+2)/2 ). Thus if we let x ′ i := xi − E(x i ), we see that it suffices to show that…”

“…Let F be the event that s n (M n ) ≤ n −(2A+1)γ , and let G be the event that N n ≤ n γ . In view of (13), it suffices to show that P(F ∧ G) ≤ n −A+α+o (1) . Set (16) b := βn 1/2−γ and ( 17)…”

“…Many advanced techniques have been worked out to serve this purpose (see, for instance [17]). In particular, the condition number is well understood, thanks to works of Kostlan, Oceanu [22,13], Edelman [6] and many others (see Section 2).…”