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 692

Modern Theory
of Dynamical Systems
A Tribute to
Dmitry Victorovich Anosov

Anatole Katok
Yakov Pesin
Federico Rodriguez Hertz
Editors

American Mathematical Society

 Modern Theory
of Dynamical Systems
A Tribute to
Dmitry Victorovich Anosov

Anatole Katok
Yakov Pesin
Federico Rodriguez Hertz
Editors
 692

Modern Theory
of Dynamical Systems
A Tribute to
Dmitry Victorovich Anosov

Anatole Katok
Yakov Pesin
Federico Rodriguez Hertz
Editors

American Mathematical Society

Providence, Rhode Island
 EDITORIAL COMMITTEE
Dennis DeTurck, Managing Editor
Michael Loss Kailash Misra Catherine Yan

2010 Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary 37Bxx, 37Cxx, 37Dxx, 37Exx, 37Gxx,
37Jxx.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Katok, A. B., editor. | Pesin, Ya. B., editor. | Rodriguez Hertz, Federico, 1973- editor.
Title: Modern theory of dynamical systems : a tribute to Dmitry Victorovich Anosov / Anatole
Katok, Yakov Pesin, Federico Rodriguez Hertz, editors.
Description: Providence, Rhode Island : American Mathematical Society, [2017] — Series: Con-
temporary mathematics ; volume 692 | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016052689 | ISBN 9781470425609 (alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Anosov, D. V. | Differentiable dynamical systems. | Hyperbolic spaces. | Bound-
ary value problems. | AMS: Dynamical systems and ergodic theory – Topological dynamics
– Topological dynamics. msc | Dynamical systems and ergodic theory – Smooth dynamical
systems: general theory – Smooth dynamical systems: general theory. msc | Dynamical sys-
tems and ergodic theory – Dynamical systems with hyperbolic behavior – Dynamical systems
with hyperbolic behavior. msc | Dynamical systems and ergodic theory – Low-dimensional
dynamical systems – Low-dimensional dynamical systems. msc | Dynamical systems and er-
godic theory – Local and nonlocal bifurcation theory – Local and nonlocal bifurcation theory.
msc | Dynamical systems and ergodic theory – Finite-dimensional Hamiltonian, Lagrangian,
contact, and nonholonomic systems – Finite-dimensional Hamiltonian, Lagrangian, contact,
and nonholonomic systems. msc
Classification: LCC QA614.8 .M645 2017 | DDC 515/.39–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016052689
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1090/conm/692

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 19 18 17 16 15 14
Dmitry Victorovich Anasov
Photograph courtesy of the Steklov Mathematical
Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences
 Contents

Preface ix
Dmitry Viktorovich Anosov: His life and mathematics
Anatole Katok 1
D.V. Anosov and our road to partial hyperbolicity
Michael Brin and Yakov Pesin 23
Escape from large holes in Anosov systems
Valentin Afraimovich and Leonid Bunimovich 29
A dynamical decomposition of the torus into pseudo-circles
François Béguin, Sylvain Crovisier, and Tobias Jäger 39
On irreducibility and disjointness of Koopman and quasi-regular representations
of weakly branch groups
Artem Dudko and Rostislav Grigorchuk 51
Isolated elliptic fixed points for smooth Hamiltonians
Bassam Fayad and Maria Saprikina 67
Nonlocally maximal and premaximal hyperbolic sets
T. Fisher, T. Petty, and S. Tikhomirov 83
Rotation numbers for S 2 diffeomorphisms
John Franks 101
Path connectedness and entropy density of the space of hyperbolic ergodic
measures
Anton Gorodetski and Yakov Pesin 111
Around Anosov-Weil theory
V. Grines and E. Zhuzhoma 123
Attractors and skew products
Yu. Ilyashenko and I. Shilin 155
Thermodynamic formalism for some systems with countable Markov structures
Michael Jakobson 177
Non-uniform measure rigidity for Zk actions of symplectic type
Anatole Katok and Federico Rodriguez Hertz 195
On a differentiable linearization theorem of Philip Hartman
Sheldon E. Newhouse 209

vii
viii CONTENTS

Time change invariants for measure preserving flows

Marina Ratner 263
Spectral boundary value problems for Laplace-Beltrami operator: Moduli of
continuity of eigenvalues under domain deformation
A. Stepin and I. Zilin 275
Measure-theoretical properties of center foliations
Marcelo Viana and Jiagang Yang 291
 Preface

This volume of the “Contemporary mathematics ” series is dedicated to the

achievements and memory of Dmitry Viktorovich Anosov (1936–2014), one of the
founders of the modern dynamical systems theory . While Anosov lived and worked
all his life in the Soviet Union and Russia, his work beginning from 1960s, had great
international resonance. Anosov’s name is forever connected with hyperbolic dy-
namics, the area where he made his most important contributions. S. Smale named
one of the central objects of this area, originally introduced by Anosov as U-systems,
Anosov systems, and this name quickly came into the universal use. The features
captured by that notion are so striking that various derivative and related objects
were given names that still refer to Anosov. Another important contribution of
Anosov is the discovery of a very flexible and rather paradoxical AbC (Approxi-
mation by Conjugation) method of constructing smooth dynamical systems with
interesting, often unexpected, properties. In the literature this method, that is still
widely used, is often called AK (Anosov-Katok) method.
The composition of this volume reflects both the influence of Anosov’s contri-
butions and his personal legacy. Two leading articles contain personal recollections;
the first of them also includes an informal partial survey of Anosov’s work. The re-
maining fifteen papers are primarily original research papers; several among them
are fully or partially surveys dedicated primarily to various aspects of Anosov’s
work. Thematically hyperbolic dynamics in a broad sense appears as the subject
in nine of those papers. Four of those are fairly directly connected with the themes
and contents of Anosov’s work. Two more papers include new applications of the
AbC method.
The authors of this volume can be approximately divided into three groups:
(i) long-term friends, colleagues, students and collaborators of Anosov from the
“Russian school”, some of them still in Russia, others now permanently living in the
United States; (ii) senior Western mathematicians directly influenced by Anosov’s
work, and (iii) mathematicians of younger generation who did not know Anosov
personally but have been influenced by his work or by the developments directly
based on that work.
The editors hope that this volume will serve as a fitting memorial to one of the
outstanding mathematicians of the second half of the twentieth century.

Anatole Katok
Yakov Pesin
Federico Rodriguez Hertz

ix
Contemporary Mathematics
Volume 692, 2017
http://dx.doi.org/10.1090/conm/692/13925

Dmitry Viktorovich Anosov: His life and mathematics

Anatole Katok

Dmitry Viktorovich Anosov (Dima for his friends) died on August 7, 2014 at
the age of 77. This article is a tribute to his memory. It consists of two parts,
different in style and purpose.

D.V. Anosov in 1977

Photo by Konrad Jacobs. Archives of the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach,
licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 DE

The first part contains personal recollections touching on both professional and
social matters. All information there is first-hand; all opinions are strictly my own.
I did not try to ask other people or do any research to provide any kind of coherent
narrative. My goal is to preserve memories of events and attitudes that not many
people have ever known, and even fewer remain in possession with passage of time.
I tried to present and preserve an image of a pretty remarkable man who lived
through complex times and whose views of the world and people around him were
lucid and free of illusions without becoming cynical. He followed a certain implicit
code of honor more strictly than many of his contemporaries, even some of those
who had reputations of being more progressive and liberal.

2010 Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary 01A60, 01A65.

2017
c A. Katok

1
2 ANATOLE KATOK

I’d like to emphasize that my recollections concern the man I knew in the late
Soviet period, namely from mid-1960s till 1982 (the latter year is the date of our
meeting in Germany, the first after my 1978 emigration from the Soviet Union). I
also met Anosov several times in the post-Soviet period in the US and in Russia.
I do not include any recollections of those meetings; in fact I do not remember
much of great interest. I’d like to point out though that, judging by Anosov’s later
writings, especially the historical surveys [8] and [9], his outlook changed in later
years, probably in the direction somewhat away from the picture I try to present.
The second part is a brief sketch of Anosov’s work, primarily from the same
period that is covered in the first part, and its influence on the broader mathematical
community.

1. Personal recollections
Algebraic topology course. I first met Anosov at some time in the mid-
sixties when he was already a very accomplished and well-established mathemati-
cian and I was still an undergraduate student although our age difference is less
that eight years. I do not remember the first meeting or first introduction. What I
do remember is that our first serious interaction was in 1966 (I believe in the fall of
that year) when my thesis adviser Ja. G. Sinai asked me to take what now would
be called a “reading course” in algebraic topology with Anosov.
I was not a novice in algebraic topology at the time. Although there was no
regular undergraduate course on the subject at the Moscow State University when
I was a student, algebraic topology was considered then and there the “queen of
mathematics” (or at least one of very few principal ladies) and every self-respecting
student was supposed to learn quite a bit of the subject somehow. I sat through
the remarkable special (topics) course given by D.B. Fuks attended for most of the
semester by 200-250 people, and fairly carefully read few books, both classical and
modern.
We used the classical book by Hilton and Wiley as a text. In fact, my task was
to solve independently all problems/exercises from that book (that I did success-
fully) and also ponder about a specific then unsolved problem relating topology and
dynamics: rationality of ζ-function for Anosov diffeomorphisms. Most of the time
during our meetings was taken by discussions of various topics and issues emerging
from those problems. So I had an ample opportunity to develop my views of Anosov
as a topologist. He was a master of the subject in full possession of all essential
results, topics and techniques. The reader should keep in mind that topology was
never Anosov’s principal mathematical area; he published only one expository pa-
per on the subject [10], albeit in the prestigious Uspehi. This first impression is
consistent with the opinion that I formed and held later when we interacted closely
and extensively. If Anosov claimed to know a major or minor mathematical sub-
ject, he knew all its ins and outs, otherwise he would either profess ignorance or
dismiss the topic.
Anosov-Katok method. If our interaction during the topology course gave
me an impression of Anosov as a scholar, some time after that I had a superb op-
portunity to observe and appreciate his creativity. In retrospect this was the high
point of original creative thinking that Anosov displayed during the period of our
close contacts, from 1966 till early 1978, and, I believe, also afterwards. In front of
my eyes Anosov invented the core of what has become known as “Anosov-Katok
 DMITRY VIKTOROVICH ANOSOV: HIS LIFE AND MATHEMATICS 3

method”1 for construction of dynamical systems with interesting, often exotic prop-
erties.
I will tell the story with minimal but necessary mathematical technicalities in
the second part of this paper. This joint work published as [12] is considered by
many as the (probably distant) second most important mathematical contribution
by Anosov after his major role in the creation of the modern theory of dynamical
systems with hyperbolic behavior immortalized by ascribing his name to several
important classes of such systems.
It’s a pity I do not remember exact date of Anosov’s inspired invention; I
am pretty sure this was during the second half of 1968. I very quickly added my
essential and extensive contributions that greatly extended the power of the method
and several weeks of discussions followed. Then I remember vividly having written
a complete draft of the paper just from my head in three successive evenings on
Friday, Saturday and Sunday (I never reached a comparable level of productivity in
my life, before or after) and having extensive discussions with Anosov that lasted
for many weeks and resulted in the final version. Typing (by a professional typist)
from the manuscript and inserting formulas and drawing pictures by hand (the last
task was performed by my wife) was not a very fast process either and the only
hard date is that of the journal submission: May 20, 1969. We published a short
announcement in Uspehi [11], but I think it was written after the main text and
in fact it appeared in print the same year (1970) as the main text.
For more than ten years that preceded my emigration from the Soviet Union
in February 1978 my contacts with Anosov, both professional and social, were
frequent and extensive. In fact, my wife and I became close friends with Anosov. I
will not follow exact chronology but rather try to address various facets of Anosov’s
personality, his attitudes and characteristic actions or sometimes inaction.
Mathematically there were strong mutual influences. Our joint work at the
beginning of the period owes its framework to the theory of periodic approximations
that we developed few years earlier with A.M. (Tolya) Stepin. On the other hand,
my own interests during the period were moving more and more toward hyperbolic
dynamics and its variations and was greatly influenced, directly and indirectly, by
Anosov and his work. Conversely, an observation in one of my papers [20] that
developed new applications of our method led Anosov to his next major interest,
variational methods in Finsler geometry.
Our seminar. The principal vehicle around which our professional interaction
was organized was a weekly afternoon seminar that most likely met at the univer-
sity during the 1969-70 academic year, and then definitely at the Steklov institute
from the fall of 1970 till 1975, and through the spring of 1977 at CEMI (The Cen-
tral Economics-Mathematics Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences) where I
worked. I had an opportunity earlier to write in detail about this seminar including
Anosov’s role in it [22]; see also [14]. Anosov was already perceived as a “senior
statesman” although he only turned forty toward the end of this period. Here is
a relevant quote from [22] about Anosov’s role: “He was brilliant and quick, and
possessed a very perceptive and critical mind. Everybody, around him, including
myself, greatly benefited from from his comments, criticism, and help with pointing
out and correcting errors.”
1 Since I still use this method in my work I prefer to call it descriptively the “approximation

by conjugation method”
4 ANATOLE KATOK

Anosov’s moral code. Let me try to describe Anosov’s moral position in

professional life at the time. Mathematics was not exempt from general trends
that dominated the life of the country during the late Soviet (post Khrushchev–
pre Gorbachev) period. Two of those tendencies, most relevant for the life of the
mathematical community, were, first, discrimination against Jews, and, to a lesser
extent, other groups, ethnic, social or professional, and, second, pervasive corrup-
tion that led to erosion of professional standards. Any mathematician who had a
formal or informal standing and influence faced issues related to those tendencies
constantly, and had to determine his or her position and line of behavior. Needless
to say, many people behaved inconsistently and opportunistically so often there was
a gap between convictions (openly stated or not) and actual behavior.
To Anosov’s great credit, his position at the time was both consistent and
explicit and his behavior on all specific occasions, known to me, fully agreed with
this position. It can be summarized like that: (1) do no evil; (2) do right things
if there is no danger of direct clash with authorities immediately responsible for
the matter; (3) act within established institutional structures; (4) do not try any
endeavor that is either doomed or would require a moral compromise beyond certain
narrowly defined bounds.
This code of behavior may not look heroic; many intellectuals, including mathe-
maticians, at the time declared more radically progressive views. From their stand-
point Anosov was a conformist and to a certain extent a “collaborator”. The
problem with this position is that most of those holding and declaring progressive
views were not able to act according to those views and ended up doing nothing at
best or making grave moral compromises at worst.
Before illustrating this general description with examples let me formulate my
own attitude toward Anosov’s moral code. I was greatly impressed by (1); he
followed this fundamental principle rigidly. I do not know whether its origins had
a Christian admixture or were fully secular. He was aware of the necessity of
moral compromises to advance a good cause (I will mention an example later)
but stayed within strict limits, and, while a few of these compromises had harmful
consequences, those were results of mistakes in his original judgement or unforeseen
outside circumstances. (2) resulted in many good things in practice, some of which
I will mention in due time. It is important to emphasize that Anosov always
considered as “authorities” only people occupying particular positions on whom
relevant decisions depended: an editor-in-chief of a journal, a department head in
an institute, a dean in a university or the chair of a scientific council responsible for
accepting dissertations. Thus his apprehensions were strictly limited and based on
the knowledge of concrete persons and their positions. To the best of my knowledge,
he was never prevented from acting for a good cause by any general trends or policies
by academic, let alone party, authorities. (3) I took matter-of-factly; boldness in
organizational matters, that was not completely impossible under the circumstances
of the time, was not in Anosov’s character. (4) annoyed me a bit, since sometimes
Anosov’s sober estimate of difficulties of a certain undertaking led to inertia. To
his credit, he never resisted initiatives by others that concerned him; moving of our
seminar to CEMI after Pontryagin’s attempt to sabotage it that is described in [22]
is an example.

Helping young mathematicians. Anosov’s personality was less engaging or

flamboyant than that of several of his contemporaries. Besides, his main position
 DMITRY VIKTOROVICH ANOSOV: HIS LIFE AND MATHEMATICS 5

was in a non-teaching institution so he did not have constant contact with stu-
dents. As a result of this there are not many mathematicians for whom Anosov
was a primary Ph.D. adviser in the way that is usually understood. During the
period covered by this recollections Anosov had two such students: A.B. Krygin
and A.A. Blohin. The former published several very good papers related to our
approximation by conjugation method and to Anosov’s program on cylindrical cas-
cades during 1970s but unfortunately stopped publishing soon afterwards. The
latter showed early promise but published only one paper and did not even defend
his Ph. D. due to illness.
There are however several successful and even highly accomplished mathemati-
cians whom Anosov helped both with their mathematics and with their careers and
for whom this help was crucial. Two best known and most impressive among those
are of course M. (Misha) Brin and Ya. (Yasha) Pesin. Their names will appear
later in this article. More information can be found in their article in this volume
[14] and in my article [22]. For both of them, aside from very significant help with
their work and acting as the official thesis adviser, Anosov provided invaluable help
that was needed to overcome the difficulties of being “out of the system” due to
their Jewish origin and strong anti-semitic tendencies of the time.
E.A. Sataev. Now I’d like to tell a story of another mathematician, E.A.
(Zhenya) Sataev, who died in 2015 whose accomplishments are somewhat less
known than they deserve. This story shows that Jewish decent was not the only
source of difficulties young people faced in the Soviet Union. Sataev was a student
at the Moscow State University; he came from a village or a small town in the
Volga area and was not an ethnic Russian but belonged to one of the Finnish peo-
ples native to the area. Unlike the majority of successful students in the university
he really came from the midst of ordinary people. Sataev’s first undergraduate
adviser was Stepin who left for Egypt around 1970 for what was supposed to be a
multi-year appointment that was cut short by the famous expulsion by Anvar Sadat
of all Soviet personnel from Egypt. Stepin left his two students, R.I. Grigorchuk
(later of groups of intermediate growth or “Grigorchuk groups” fame) and Sataev,
to me. When Stepin returned, Grigorchuk continued to work with him but Sataev
stayed with me. Sataev did not have a residence permit for Moscow or Moscow
district so he was not able to get a job in Moscow or nearby. My standing at the
time of his graduation (1972) was not sufficient to recommend Sataev for the grad-
uate program at the university. In any event Sataev decided to go to work in one of
the notorious Soviet “secret towns” (Arzamas-16) that paid a good wage and was
located not too far from his family home. Very quickly Sataev realized that this
had been an unwise decision since it greatly restricted whatever limited freedoms
ordinary Soviet citizens enjoyed. At the end of his initial contract Sataev was able
to leave for a graduate program in mathematics. But I still was not able to help
him with admission to the university program2 . Anyway, I mentioned Sataev’s situ-
ation to Anosov and he generously offered to have Sataev admitted to the graduate
program at the Steklov Institute on the understanding that Sataev will continue
2 I am not sure why I did not try to have him admitted to the program at my place of

work, CEMI (Central Economics and Mathematics Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences).
This was feasible. Maybe I already started to think about emigration and did not want to leave
Sataev unprotected. Or, more likely, since the pressure to do work related to the institute mission
increased, I did not feel I could have a student working in pure mathematics.
6 ANATOLE KATOK

to work with me. Unlike the cases of Brin and Pesin, where Anosov was a genuine
co-adviser, this was a “cover”: Sataev worked then on topics unrelated to Anosov’s
interests. This “cover” was at least as valuable for Sataev as theirs was for Brin and
Pesin. In the event, Sataev did an excellent thesis work on Kakutani equivalence
theory that came earlier than a similar project by the giants of ergodic theory D.
Ornstein, D. Rudolph and B. Weiss and was only marginally weaker than theirs.
This followed his similarly impressive Masters thesis (on a quite different topic);
both were published in Izvestija. I like to believe that Sataev’s Ph.D. defense took
place on February 15, 1978, the day I left The Soviet Union for good. I still have a
pretty huge twelve-layers matryoshka as his parting present. While this date may
be wrong by a couple of weeks, having Anosov as an official adviser guaranteed
that Sataev was not tainted by too close an association with an emigre.3 Sataev
still had no residence permit for Moscow or the district so the best he could do was
to get a job in Obninsk, a restricted but not fully secret town less than a hundred
miles from Moscow. He had a successful career there becoming a Doctor of Science
and Department chair and consistently doing good work in a particular area of
hyperbolic dynamics, but I have reasons to believe judging by his brilliant early
work that the relative isolation of the place prevented him from realizing his full
potential.

Anosov as journal editor. In practical terms, the great majority of situ-

ations where Anosov had to exercise his professional judgement and face moral
dilemmas appeared in connection with consideration of papers for publication and
defense and approval of dissertations, both candidate (equivalent to Ph. D.) and the
higher level Doctor of Science. At the time Anosov was on editorial boards of two
journals: Izvestija of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and Zametki (Mathematical
Notes of the Academy).
Those days virtually all papers by mathematicians in the Soviet Union were
published in domestic journals; the leading journals were quickly translated into
English cover-to-cover and published in the West. Hierarchy of journals was quite
important. The top tier consisted of Izvestija, Sbornik, Uspehi, and Doklady
to which is often added irregularly published Trudy MMO (Transactions of the
Moscow Mathematical Society).4 Among those only the first two (and Trudy) were
regular vehicles for publishing complete original papers; Izvestija in general was
considered the most prestigious among the three. Doklady published research an-
nouncements with the strict limit of four printed pages and Uspehi at least officially
was dedicated to publishing surveys, although in reality often those “surveys” con-
tained a high proportion of original results. Zametki was among the best journals
in the next tier.
Both discrimination and corruption issues appeared in the context of publica-
tion of mathematical papers. Discrimination pressure was felt more acutely in the
journals published by the Academy due to pronounced anti-semitic attitudes of the
academy bureaucracy and some leading academicians, including I.M. Vinogradov,

3 We had published a joint paper in Zametki in 1976 but this degree of association was not

harmful at the time.

4 “Functional Analysis and its application”, established in the sixties, de facto maintained as

high and occasionally even higher level than any of those journals; it, however, had a reputation
of being the mouthpiece of Gelfand’s school.
 DMITRY VIKTOROVICH ANOSOV: HIS LIFE AND MATHEMATICS 7

L.S. Pontryagin and A.N. Tykhonov.5 Influence of corruption was felt through
preferential treatment of papers by certain authors, and, conversely, keeping away
the work of their competitors, loose refereeing standards, and suchlike.
Thus on boards of two leading Academy journals Anosov faced not the most
friendly environment. Still during the ten-year period I observed him in this ca-
pacity he never swayed from the highest standard on research and scholarship and
never hesitated to promote high quality papers, independently of personalities of
their authors.
Careers of Brin and Pesin were launched by the publication of their major paper
on partial hyperbolicity in Izvestija [13], a landmark in the field. This occurrence
is hard to imagine under standard circumstances existing at the time with two
unknown young Jewish authors who were not even graduate students but worked
in institutions unrelated to mathematics (for more on their circumstances at the
time see [22]). Another paper of Pesin, [29], that contained the core technical
results of celebrated “Pesin theory” appeared in Izvestija a couple of years later.
A convincing, albeit indirect, illustration of my thesis comes from difficulties
both Brin and Pesin faced in submitting and defending their Ph.D.’s based on
their world class work (two Izvestija papers, one Uspehi paper plus publications in
other first-rate journals, including Zametki) that under normal circumstances would
qualify each of them for the Doctor of Science degree. In both cases anti-semitic
attitudes and policies prevented them from having their dissertations accepted for
defense in the leading places such as Moscow State University, Steklov Institute
or even other places in the capital, and forced them and their backers to look for
places outside of Moscow. Brin was able to defend his thesis in Kharkov in 1975, of
course with strong backing by Anosov, but using some key connections of his own
to overcome even more pronounced anti-semitism that existed in the Ukraine at
the time. Pesin had to wait till 1979, when his work already became world famous,
and it was entirely due to Anosov, that he was able to defend his dissertation in
Gorky (now Nizhnij Novgorod). Very interesting story of Pesin’s defense is told in
another article in this volume [14]; notice in particular the moral compromise that
Anosov consciously made to achieve success. As far as I know, a previous attempt
by Anosov to have Pesin’s dissertation accepted for defense in the university of
Rostov was unsuccessful, but this setback did not discourage Anosov.
I published two major papers in Izvestija during the period [20, 21]. The story
of publication of the second paper is worth telling since it vividly illustrated some
of the features of Anosov’s approach to the difficulties exiting at the time that I
described above. The paper presents a core of what I called “monotone equivalence
theory” in ergodic theory and is now commonly called Kakutani equivalence theory.
It is based on results that I obtained in 1975 and early 1976. It was an extensive
body of work and by no means exhausted the subject by that time. A Doklady
announcement of key results was published in 1975 and I asked Anosov about
feasibility of submitting the paper with complete proofs (some of which were not yet
written then) to Izvestija. Anosov had a very high opinion of the results and asked
me how long the paper would be. I answered that after everything is completed it

5 Uspehi and Trudy were published by the Moscow Mathematical Society; Sbornik was a

joint publication of the Society and the Academy; and Doklady, while an Academy publication,
published papers communicated by individual academicians without additional reviews.
8 ANATOLE KATOK

would be about 100 pages. Anosov explained that he would not be able to have a
paper of such length published in Izvestija.
The editor-in-chief of the journal was elderly I.M.Vinogradov, then 84 years of
age but still director of the Steklov institute and the N1 in the hierarchy of math-
ematicians in the Soviet Union. As I already mentioned, he was a convinced and
inveterate anti-semite. His anti-semitic attitude was apparently not of opportunis-
tic nature as was the case with many Soviet officials and even scientists but was a
deeply held conviction stemming from attitudes of the hard right in the late czarist
times.
His deputy was I.R. Shafarevich, a great mathematician who held and in fact
expressed strong anti-communist views, and, surprisingly, was only mildly repri-
manded for that. Of course, later he became infamous for his chauvinistic and
anti-semitic writings and became an icon of the Russian nationalist hard right.
Still, in fairness, his anti-semitism at the time (and, I believe, later too) was of
a theoretical nature and did not descend into hatred of individual Jews simply
because they were Jews. In any event, as a de facto editor-in-chief of Izvestija, Sha-
farevish followed a high-minded and fair policy. He could approve all articles with
strong positive recommendation by other editors up to a certain length indepen-
dently of the authors’ nationality and other extraneous features without showing
them to Vinogradov.
But for exceptionally long articles (and 100 pages was over the limit) Vino-
gradov’s direct approval was required. Anosov was ready to argue merits of my
work with Shafarevich and other members of the editorial board (not all of them
friendly to Jews) but not ready to confront Vinogradov who would almost surely
veto publication.
Anosov’s suggested solution was simple: to split the work into two papers about
50 pages each and publish them with some time interval. For that, approval of
Shafarevich, which would be forthcoming, was sufficient. In order for this scheme
to succeed an interval of about a year between publication of two articles was
required; if the interval was too short Vinogradov may be informed that splitting
of the paper was a ploy.
This conversation took place at the end of 1975 or at the beginning of 1976. By
then my tolerance of life in the Soviet Union was wearing thin and I already decided
to leave the country after some necessary preparations. When in 1971-72 for the
first time emigration became a realistic possibility with a tolerable level of risk and
our friends and colleagues started leaving, my wife and I seriously discussed the
possibility and decided to stay put. This changed by the late 1975 due to a variety
of factors.6 Thus I knew that I may not have time to publish two papers with an
interval of a year. On the occasion, the 54-page long paper [21] was submitted
to Izvestija on March 3, 1976 and appeared in print in the first issue of 1977, i.e.
around February of that year. On February 15 of 1978 I left the Soviet Union with
my family for good as stateless persons stripped of the Soviet citizenship. I applied
for emigration in July of 1977 and this quickly became public knowledge. Thus if
I submitted the second part early in 1977 or even late in 1976 it would not have
appeared in print by that time.

6 I hope to discuss the matter of emigration in detail on another occasion since it has only

tangential relation to my present subject.

 DMITRY VIKTOROVICH ANOSOV: HIS LIFE AND MATHEMATICS 9

What happened with submitted or even accepted papers of would-be emigrants

was well-known. A paper by B.G. Moishezon, a brilliant algebraic geometer, one
of the favorite students of Shafarevich and my CEMI colleague, who emigrated in
1973, that was not only accepted but already typeset for an issue of Izvestija, was
removed and the issue came out thiner than usual. My wife Svetlana Katok, whose
short paper was scheduled to appear in the more friendly Uspehi, was asked by a
very honorable and decent editorial board member to withdraw the paper when
we applied for emigration. The motivation was not to expose the journal and the
society to attacks and criticism by the party watchdogs.
Thus I decided to call off the still unfinished second part of my paper, pack into
the last section of the fist (and, as it turned out, the only) paper the announcements
of remaining results, and submit it as fast as I could. As is seen from my narrative,
I had just a few months to spare. I got a consolation from simultaneous publication
by Izvestija in the first issue of 1977 of Sataev’s thesis paper that was in a way a
continuation of mine albeit in a quite different direction than my projected second
part.

Refereeing and approving dissertations. Anosov was a member of the

Higher Attestation Board that had to approve all mathematics dissertations de-
fended in the USSR. For readers not familiar with the Soviet/Russian academic
system here is a brief summary that ignores issues related to discrimination and
corruption.
The candidate degree is usually considered an equivalent to Ph.D. but signifying
a slightly higher level of achievement and accordingly carrying more prestige. The
main requirement was a dissertation accompanied by publications. The dissertation
was to be submitted to a scientific council with fixed membership (typically 15 to
25 members) attached to a particular university or a research institute. It has to
be accepted for defense that was public with two referees (somewhat misleadingly
called “official opponents”) and outside review from a “leading organization in the
field”. Defense included a presentation by the candidate, speeches by the opponents,
reading of outside review, usually also a speech by the thesis adviser, and a free-
format discussion in which both the council members and guests could participate.
The vote was secret and a two-third majority of positive votes was required for
approval. Active mathematicians usually defended their candidate theses within
3-8 years after graduation from the university. Three-year (post)-graduate studies
program was meant to prepare the candidate thesis; it could be taken even right
after graduation of after an interval of time. It was not a precondition for submitting
the thesis. In fact, both Brin and Pesin did not attend the graduate program [22].
Doctor of Science degree was very prestigious, at the time there were no
preparatory courses, defense procedure was similar but with three opponents, all
of whom naturally should hold the degree. There were fewer councils that were
authorized to accept Dr. S. dissertations.
All dissertations have to be approved by a central authority called the Higher
Attestation Board (VAK). Under normal circumstances its function was to exercise
quality control that was necessary due to great variation of standards across the
degree-granting institutions. I believe in the seventies it performed this function to a
certain extent but in addition to that the Board (or its particularly eager individual
members) also watched after dissertations whose authors were Jewish and on a
10 ANATOLE KATOK

number of occasions rejected them. Needless to say, that Anosov’s position as a

member of the VAK’s mathematics panel was based on strict professional standards.
While to guarantee a successful outcome of Pesin’s defense in Gorky Anosov
had to make a promise to see a sub-standard dissertation through VAK [14], he
was fully aware of the moral cost and realized that this was the only way to help
Pesin whose work by then was several levels above the accepted standards for a
PH.D. Overall Anosov looked after a number of excellent dissertations by Jewish
mathematicians (they were mostly people who had some local connections to pass
the hurdle of defense) that would not have passed VAK without his intervention.

Warsaw 1977 conference. Here is another episode from the same period
that demonstrates Anosov’s attitude.
In the summer of 1977 an international dynamical systems conference was orga-
nized in Warsaw by a group of Polish mathematicians among whom Wieslaw Szlenk
played the principal role. An explicit purpose of that conference was to arrange
a major encounter between “the East” and “the West”. This was spectacularly
successful.
There were two groups of participants from Moscow. An officially approved
“delegation” was headed by Anosov and included also Stepin and E.B. Vul. Three
other participants, Brin, M.V.(Misha) Jakobson, and myself, came ostensibly on
private invitations of our Polish colleagues. This was the only realistic way for
us to travel outside of the Soviet Union; any attempt to obtain permission to go
on official business would be blocked by one of the numerous bureaucratic offices
or party committees whose approval was required. The principal but unstated
reason would be that the applicants were Jewish. One that might be stated and
did have relevance, was that the subject of the conference did not fit with the
principal specialties of our places of work. Of course, form the point of view of the
conference organizers we were fully-fledged participants of the conference; maybe
even somewhat more interesting than the official delegates since we had not traveled
to the West before and were new for the Western participants.
So I come to the punchline. Anosov, as the head of the official delegation, was
supposed to write a report to appropriate authorities in Moscow, I presume the
administration of the mathematics division of the academy, or the Steklov Institute.
He was in a bind: to acknowledge the presence of unauthorized participants from
Moscow who spoke at the conference with a considerable success, or to lie. He
found an imaginative solution, very much in his style. While he socialized and
closely interacted with us during the conference, he was conspicuously absent from
our talks. In a sense this was mocking his official status and obligations. But
looking from another viewpoint, he took a certain risk. Obviously, he planned to
ignore our presence in his official report. But, if there was a KGB informer in the
audience, Anosov could be denounced for socializing with unauthorized conference
participants from Moscow and not admitting their presence. Such a possibility
could not be excluded given a large number of local people (and probably some
Soviet visitors unrelated to the conference) in the audience.
This is a good example of “passive resistance” that Anosov practiced in a
variety of situations.
 DMITRY VIKTOROVICH ANOSOV: HIS LIFE AND MATHEMATICS 11

Relations with Pontryagin. Anosov was a student of L.S. Pontryagin, one

of the greatest among the first great generation of mathematicians of the post-
revolutionary (Soviet) period. Pontryagin’s evolution, both as a mathematician
and and as human being, presents a somewhat sad sight. In the 1930s and 1940s
he was a brilliant creative and very broad mathematician who made a great impact
in algebraic topology during its formative period, created duality theory for locally
compact abelian groups and, together with the physicist A.A. Andronov, became
one of the creators of modern theory of dynamical systems. He was also known for
his independent and on the whole honest and courageous behavior in professional
life that is not a small compliment for someone who lived in the Soviet Union
through that terrible period. Sometime during the 1950s, when he was still in his
mid-forties, his mathematical interests moved toward more applied direction and
he made a major impact in that area as one of the creators of the modern theory
of optimal control. After that, his mathematical standards dropped and he was
in general surrounded by people of less than stellar quality, if not outright hacks.
Pontryagin wrote a textbook in ordinary differential equations and he taught the
regular ODE course to my sophomore class. His presentation was heavy and not
very illuminating and it was hard to believe that was the same man who more
than twenty years earlier had written the masterpiece “Continuous groups” that
still remains as good and illuminating presentation of the Pontryagin duality and
related subject as any. It was also strange that Pontyagin tried to supersede then
standard in the Soviet Union ODE text by the great I.G. Petrovsky that, even
though a bit outdated by now, still makes an excellent and lucid reading.7 One
had a nagging feeling that Pontryagin pushed his approach and his book out of
spite of Petrovsky and that feeling unfortunately has some support in the story
of evolution of Pontryagin’s personal views. More or less simultaneously with his
turn toward applied mathematics Pontryagin’s views and behavior became quite
retrograde and reactionary. He became a pronounced anti-semite and this attitude
found an expression in his professional behavior.8
Anosov was Pontryagin’s graduate student at the Steklov Institute on the ODE
side. He was clearly Pontryagin’s favorite. He was greatly influenced by Andronov-
Pontryagin seminal work on structural stability and his presentation, both in the
early papers on averaging and in the classical work on hyperbolic dynamics, was
clearly influenced by Pontryagin’s style of the period. Pontryagin was the head of
the ODE department of the Steklov Institute and Anosov stayed in the department
after the graduate school. Pontryagin not only highly valued Anosov’s work but
also from the beginning considered Anosov his trusted lieutenant. Steklov Insti-
tute as a whole and its individual members, especially those in senior positions,
wielded considerable influence, if not outright control, over research enterprise in
mathematics. Anosov, despite his young age and a somewhat reticent personality,
quickly became a member of this senior elite. Even though I do not know details
of the inner workings of the Steklov elite at the time, it is clear (and is confirmed

7 Petrovsky’s approach indeed needed some updating and that was brilliantly accomplished

a bit later by V.I. Arnold

8 My opinion of Pontryagin’s course and his text is at variance with what Anosov wrote several

decades later in [9]. Anosov, while acknowledging tensions between Petrovsky and Pontryagin,
and certain decline in Pontryagin’s stsndards, takes Pontryagin’s side and in fact makes some
disparaging remarks about Petrovsky.
12 ANATOLE KATOK

by Anosov’s occasional remarks) that this quick accent was due to patronage and
protection of Pontryagin.
That at the time Anosov disapproved of Pontryagin’s attitudes and behavior
on the Jewish issue was quite obvious and he expressed this disapproval in private
conversations, as well as in some actions. Here is what I wrote on another occasion
[22]:“Anosov, a former student of Pontryagin, considered for a while as his picked
successor, refused to follow the hard line of his bosses, and, short of open rebellion,
was sabotaging their agenda with considerable success.9 ” I continue with details
about the move of our seminar from Steklov to CEMI that Anosov approved after
Pontryagin refused to authorize the list of persons for admission to the building
with many Jewish names. At the time I was under the impression that cooling
down of relationships between Anosov and Pontryagin went further and came close
to a formal break. Unfortunately, I never asked Anosov about that when I met
with him in post-Soviet times. According to S.P. Novikov, who possesses lots of
inside information that is not always 100% reliable, no visible cooling down or a
break has ever taken place. So I rest here.

Private life. Anosov came from an academic family. Both of his parents were
chemistry professors/researchers of considerable repute. In fact, there is an article
about his father Viktor Yakovlevich Anosov in a respectable Russian series “Sci-
entific heritage of Russia” where V.Y.Anosov is called “one of the most important
specialists in the area of physical chemistry analysis”. The mother Nina Konstanti-
novna Voskresenskaya also held a Dr. S. degree. I have known a number of Soviet
academic families of that generation when material rewards for upper-crust aca-
demics were very high compared to the overall living standards, e.g. the base pay
of two professors/Dr. S.’s was about 12-15 times the average earning of a person
with a college degree. Such families in the 1940-50s and, to a lesser extent, in
1960-70s typically enjoyed lifestyle with pronounced bourgeois overtones: a spa-
cious well-furnished city apartment, with valuable items, often even good works of
art, good food, a car, often a country house (dacha), until about 1960 a live-in maid;
later a part-time maid/cook. The Anosov family that at the time I got to know it,
had three, not just two, high-earners, presented a great contrast to that stereotype.
They did live in a large by the Moscow standards, apartment in a good (but not
great) location and they did have a rather sorry looking woman helper (the parents
were well in their seventies), but there it stopped. The furniture was spartan, to
put it charitably, or plain shabby, the food very simple. The lifestyle of the family
can be described as ascetic. When I first got to know them the father was still alive
but looked very old and fragile but the mother was still quite active. The father
died in 1972, the mother around 1975. The only luxury was an excellent for the
time stereo-system and a collection of high quality records of classical music, mostly
foreign made. Dima was a great lover and connoisseur of classical music. Those
records were practically the only things Dima brought from his relatively frequent
foreign trips. At the time when Levi’s blue jeans were both the badge of distinction
and almost an alternative currency it is extremely remarkable that he did not buy
abroad any clothing items and dressed in an old-fashioned and somewhat awkward
way in domestically made clothing.

9 Anosov did become the department head but already under somewhat different

circumstances
 DMITRY VIKTOROVICH ANOSOV: HIS LIFE AND MATHEMATICS 13

I see two reasons for this contrast. The principal one is the difference between
the old Russian and Soviet “intelligencia”. The former defined itself mostly by
moral and intellectual attitudes and very often, although not always, was indifferent
to the material comforts, let alone luxury. It was characterized by great sensitivity
to the plight of the poor and the disadvantaged and often made material sacrifices
to alleviate it. The latter, to allow for a certain oversimplification, thought of itself
as an elite of the middle class whose material and spiritual interests were in a sort
of balance or equilibrium. Thus, those of its members (by no means a majority)
who could afford good things in life, usually went for those, conforming to the
generalized picture presented above. Anosov’s family belonged to intelligencia at
least in the third generation and it quickly became clear to me, that the parents
spiritually belonged to the old Russian intelligencia although their careers spanned
the Soviet period. I heard that Anosov’s parents used to support poor students and
other destitute people in keeping with the Russian intelligencia traditions. I will
comment on Dima’s generosity later. Still I believe the expenditures of the family
were much smaller than their earnings. While the parents may have been genuinely
disinterested in material comforts Dima, who belonged to a different generation,
was not averse to enjoying some of those.
And here comes another subsidiary reason. At the time (the late Soviet pe-
riod) there was great scarcity of quality items of almost any kind (food, clothing,
furniture, books etc) through regular distribution channels. Money as such could
buy little. One needed in addition “connections” in the form of access to official
(special stores) semi-official (wholesale distribution chain) or unofficial (black mar-
ket) alternative distributions channels. Dima lacked skills necessary to obtain such
access to an astonishing degree. Only when he married shortly after his mother’s
death was this problem alleviated.
Let me finish this sketch by describing an instance of Dima’s generosity. By
1971 I and my wife Svetlana had two children and we lived in a single room (about
220-240 sq. ft.) in a communal apartment with two more families and the fourth
room occupied until 1970 by Svetlana’s grandparents and idle after her grand-
mother’s death and grandfathers’ move with her parents. That was obviously
inadequate, even more so since I grew up in a single-family apartment and was
accustomed to better living conditions. So we started to look for a co-op apart-
ment. Although those were built by various enterprises, leftovers, that could not
be filled by the employees, were available to the general public. There were also
restrictions that prevented most people, even those who had money, from buying
larger apartments. Fortunately a Ph.D. holder had a considerable extra allowance
so our family was eligible for approximately an 750-800 sq. ft apartment. And
larger apartments were often left out due to administrative restrictions and cost so
we were able to quickly find a decent apartment of about that size. But then money
became an issue. Downpayment was strictly fixed at 40% and that amounted to
4500 rubles or one-and-a-half year gross earnings of myself and my wife at the time.
After a relatively routine promotion that was expected in a year or two that would
go down to just my own gross earnings for the same period. We had no savings
to speak of and neither Svetlana’s parents nor my mother could help us. While
mortgages existed and the rate for remaining 60% of the cost was quite low (we
were able to afford monthly payments) there was no way to borrow money for the
14 ANATOLE KATOK

downpayment, and besides, there were no realistic chances of repaying, even the
principal, within several years.
So we pondered this problem. I had an aunt who had considerable savings
and who obviously loved me but I could not approach her with a request of that
magnitude. At the end I asked and received from her 1000 rubles, nominally as
a loan. We were quite close with Anosov at the time and once when he visited
us in our room we started to discuss the issue in his presence not having in mind
to ask him for anything. We were astounded when Dima offered to borrow the
whole amount from him, naturally without interest and with an indefinite term
of repayment. Needless to say, we accepted and later decreased the amount by
borrowing 1000 rubles from my aunt. The fact is that, had we stayed in the USSR,
we would probably have not been able to repay the money before serious inflation
started. As it was, we repaid in full from the money we received after selling our
apartment before leaving the USSR in 1978.
So what was the reason for such an extraordinary generosity? Yes, we were
friends but our friendship at the time was only three years old and our closeness
was considerable but still not very great. I believe the answer is this: in Anosov’s
value system the welfare and comfort of a family he cared about stood much higher
than this amount of money for which after all he did not have an immediate use.
And the love of money as such was completely alien to him.

2. Mathematical legacy
Chronology of Anosov’s principal publications and his expository and
historical writing.
Control theory and averaging in ODE: three papers in 1959-60 and a paper in 1996.
Hyperbolic dynamics: Six works (including a monograph) published in 1962-70
although they mostly cover work done before 1964-5.
Approximation in smooth dynamics: four papers in 1970-74.
Various aspects of geodesics in Riemannian and Finsler geometry: six papers in
1975-85.
Nielsen numbers: a 1985 paper.
Behavior of lifts of orbits of flows on compact surfaces to the universal cover: twelve
papers in 1987-2005.
Return to hyperbolic dynamics: a 1996 paper and five papers in 2010-14.
Anosov’s output, especially in his later years, contains a substantial amount of
expository, historical and biographical writing. Those range from numerous jubilee
articles and obituaries (usually signed by many people), to presentations of some
classical topics, to analysis of historical developments, to attempts at broad surveys
of recent history. Anosov possessed an excellent and very lucid understanding of
many subjects as well as a somewhat peculiar wit and this makes some of his
writings very interesting. A good representative example is [7].
As a matter of general fairness to the dynamical community, I feel compelled to
comment on Anosov’s most ambitious attempts in this genre, two historical surveys
[9] and [8] written in his later years. The former gives his view of the “hyperbolic
 DMITRY VIKTOROVICH ANOSOV: HIS LIFE AND MATHEMATICS 15

revolution” of the 1960s and his personal participation in it. While the personal
recollections are of obvious interest, the general picture is somewhat distorted and,
as I will explain later, not necessarily in Anosov’s favor. Worse, his evaluation
of contributions of various people then and later is distorted by omission of some
essential names that were well known to him. The long survey [8] that covers the
last quarter of the twentieth century suffers from similar deficiencies even more.
Selection and even more omissions of names and topics for the survey make a
strange impression; see the detailed critical MR review [17]. Evidently, Anosov’s
outlook and some of his principles evolved in the post-Soviet period when in Russia
he received a lot of recognition and achieved fairly high visibility even outside of
the mathematics community (in contrast with restrained reception in the West),
and did not have to face moral dilemmas of the previous period.

Anosov’s contribution to hyperbolic dynamics. In this paper I will only

discuss Anosov’s works on hyperbolic dynamics and approximation in smooth dy-
namics. One reason is that those works are the most influential among Anosov’s
contributions. Another is that they and their immediate aftermath correspond to
the period of my close interaction with Anosov described in the first section.
I apologize for patchy character of my bibliography. I tried not to overload this
completely non-technical paper with references. In the era of internet in general
and Google Scholar and MathSciNet in particular an interested reader can fill the
gaps with only moderate efforts.
Anosov’s name is forever connected with hyperbolic dynamics, one of the prin-
cipal parts of the theory of dynamical systems. Hundreds of papers study and
thousands mention Anosov systems, various versions of this notion such as Anosov
diffeomorphisms and Anosov flows, as well as later variations: pseudo-Anosov maps,
Anosov group actions, and so on. Anosov originally named this object U -systems,
but soon afterwards Smale re-christened them Anosov systems, and this term im-
mediately took off in the English language literature, and in a few years substituted
the original terminology in the Russian language publications as well. Is this an
accidental luck or are there deeper reasons? I think that popularity of these math-
ematical objects, and hence their names after their discoverer, is not accidental.
The origins of the modern view of dynamical systems with finite-dimensional
phase space can be traced to the works of H. Poincaré at the end of the 19th century.
During the first half of the 20th century development of the theory followed sev-
eral, mostly parallel, courses. Here are key names from that period: J. Hadamard,
G.D. Birkhoff, O. Perron, M. Morse, G. Hedlund, A. Denjoy, A.A. Andronov, L.S.
Pontryagin, J. von Neumann, E. Hopf. Fundamental progress that led to a new
synthesis that created foundations of the modern theory of dynamical systems took
place in the 1950s and early 1960s. Its principal elements are two discoveries of
Kolmogorov ( KAM theory and entropy in dynamics) and “hyperbolic revolution”,
as Anosov called it in his historical survey [9]. Retrospectively, that was not that
much of a revolution if one properly synthesizes the points of view of Hadamard,
Morse, Hedlund and Hopf. Principal actors of this revolution came from different
mathematical backgrounds: S. Smale from topology, Anosov from the theory of
differential equations, Sinai from probability theory, V. M. Alexeyev from classi-
cal mechanics. As is well known, the first impulse came from Smale, as Anosov
colorfully describes in [9]. One should not, however, overestimate the role of this
16 ANATOLE KATOK

impulse that provided a description of a somewhat artificial example of a struc-

turally stable diffeomorphism that contains the “Smale horseshoe” as an invariant
set. Almost immediately the leadership in the “hyperbolic revolution” passed to a
group of young mathematicians from Moscow (Alexeyev, Anosov, Sinai; V.I. Arnold
also showed lively and fruitful interest). The reason for this (other than obvious
talents of the main actors) was that Moscow mathematicians brought to this new
area deep understanding and intuition from different areas of analysis, differential
equations and probability theory while Smale’s motivation came almost exclusively
form topology.
Anosov’s principal contributions to hyperbolic dynamics are contained in his
monograph [3] based on his 1965 Doctor of Science thesis and published in 1967.
Most of its results, including the main ones are announced in two Doklady notes
[1] and [2] published in 1962 and 1963 correspondingly. Notice that the first of
these papers that contains, among other things, the structural stability of Anosov
systems, was submitted for publication in March of 1962, i.e. less than 6 months
after Smale’s famous appearance at the Kiev non-linear oscillations conference that
Anosov describes in [9]. Smale at the time had no ideas how to prove structural
stability of hyperbolic toral automorphisms, let alone geodesic flows on negatively
curved manifolds, while Anosov’s results go far beyond Smale’s structural stability
program. So, from my point of view, in his own account, Anosov gives too much
credit to Smale and puts his own achievements into the shadow. The reasons for
that are not clear to me; while modesty may have played a role, there may have
been some additional motives.
Anosov developed principal technical tools of hyperbolic dynamics, first of all,
the theory of stable and unstable foliations, and approach based on considerations
of ε-orbits (pseudo-orbits) and their families. Let me try to describe briefly the
essence of these two main discoveries of Anosov in this area.
An Anosov system is characterized by the presence of two invariant sub-bundles
of the tangent bundle to the phase space that (in the continuous time case, together
with the orbit direction) generate the tangent bundle. Vectors in one sub-bundle
(called contracting or stable) are contracted with exponential speed under the time
evolution in the positive direction, while in the other one (called expanding or
unstable) are contracted with exponential speed under the time evolution in the
negative direction. A priori those sub-bundles are not even assumed to be continu-
ous, but continuity, and even Hölder continuity, follow; see [4] for the proof of the
Hölder property. On the other hand, even for infinitely differentiable or analytic
systems they are not even C 1 .10
Still, those sub-bundles are uniquely integrable to two foliations with smooth
leaves that, however, often do not change in a differentiable way in the transverse
direction.Their integrability follows from classical results of Hadamard and Perron
(Anosov emphasizes that); and, at least in the analytic case, can be traced even
farther back to even earlier work of Darboux, Poincaré and Lyapunov. Existence
of these foliations is very useful for the investigation of topological properties of
Anosov systems, including structural stability. However, for the study of more
subtle analytic as well as ergodic properties, the absence of differentiability, from the

10 While the C 1 property holds for large open sets of Anosov systems, C 2 is already highly

exceptional and related to phenomena of rigidity; Anosov pioneering insight in this direction is
contained in Section 24 of [3].
 DMITRY VIKTOROVICH ANOSOV: HIS LIFE AND MATHEMATICS 17

first glance, presents and an unsurmountable obstacle. E. Hopf in [18] proved the
ergodicity of the geodesic flows on the surfaces of variable negative curvature.11 In
this case stable and unstable foliations are constructed geometrically as horocyclic
foliations. Hopf used the fact that the horocyclic foliations are C 1 .12 This is also
true in higher dimension if the curvature is “pinched”: the ratio of the minimal
(largest in absolute value) curvature to the maximal one is strictly less than 4.
Otherwise the horocyclic foliation on negatively curved manifolds of dimension
greater than 2 are usually not C 1 . The proof of ergodicity of geodesic flows on such
manifolds was one of the principal goals of Anosov’s work. He discovered a property
that holds in this case and is sufficient for applicability of the Hopf argument, and
hence allows to prove ergodicity. In a somewhat simplified way, the property of
absolute continuity of foliations, discovered and proved (for general Anosov systems)
by Anosov, states that the holonomy map between two nearby stable leaves along
the unstable (weak-unstable in the continuous time case) foliation is absolutely
continuous with respect to Lebesgue measure. Here the weak-unstable foliation
is obtained by integrating jointly the unstable sub-bundle and the orbit direction.
This property of absolute continuity and its various versions and generalizations
played a central role in the development of the hyperbolic dynamics in the last
half-century.
Anosov’s second discovery provides a convincing explanation of “chaotic” be-
havior of trajectories in an even more general class of systems with hyperbolic
behavior than Anosov systems. I am talking about hyperbolic sets introduced by
Smale, where existence of contracting and expanding sub-bundles is postulated not
for the whole phase space but only on a closed invariant set. To avoid non-essential
technicalities I will discuss the discrete time case only. If in such a system one
can find a sequence of points (not even in the hyperbolic set itself but in its small
neighborhood) such that every subsequent point is close to the image of the previ-
ous one (such a sequence is called an ε-orbit or a pseudo-orbit) then close to this
sequence there exists a unique genuine orbit of the system. Furthermore, if a fam-
ily of ε-orbits, naturally parametrized and continuous by elements of a topological
space then the corresponding family of orbits is also continuous in that topology.
This principle of shadowing is one of the most important, if not the most impor-
tant organizing principle of hyperbolic dynamics. It directly implies the widely
known Anosov closing lemma, structural stability, existence of Markov partitions
and many other things. This principle was present implicitly in [3], was explicitly
formulated in [5], became the central element of the fundamental series of papers
by R. Bowen (1947-1978), the most brilliant representative of the Smale school, was
made the centerpiece of the presentation of the hyperbolic dynamics by the author
[19] from where it found its way to [23] that became a standard text.
Early influence of Anosov’s ideas can be seen both from the development of the
Smale school and from work of such outstanding mathematicians as Ju.Moser [27]
and J.Mather [26] who interpreted and developed some of those ideas.
Two mathematicians of the next generation, who played a central role in the
development of hyperbolic dynamics, M. Brin and Ja.Pesin, were joint students of

11 For the constant negative curvature case ergodicity had been proved earlier by Hedlund

using geometric methods.

12 His method that is justifiably known as the “Hopf argument” still plays the central role in

the study of ergodic properties of various classes of systems with hyperbolic behavior.
18 ANATOLE KATOK

Anosov and the author. Their work is foundational for two major directions of
hyperbolic dynamics that continue as active research areas to this day: partially
hyperbolic dynamics [13] and non-uniformly hyperbolic dynamics [30] which is
often called the “Pesin theory”. Anosov’s role in their mathematical development
included strong conceptual influence, constructive criticism and editing of their
work, as well as great help at early stages of their mathematical careers mentioned
in the first section that was highly non-trivial in the complicated and unfriendly
environment of 1970s.
Interestingly, the most important direct follower of Anosov was Smale’s student
J. Franks. In his thesis [16] he proved basic results about global structure of Anosov
diffeomorphisms and formulated a program for their further study that greatly
influenced subsequent work on the subject. Important early contributions to the
realization of this program are due to S. Newhouse [28] and A. Manning [25]. The
problem of global topological classification of Anosov diffeomorphisms remains one
of the most interesting open problems in the theory of dynamical systems. In my
2004 Berkeley-MSRI lecture I listed it among “Five most resistant problems in
dynamics”.
Brin and Pesin found important applications of their general work on partially
hyperbolic systems but otherwise the area lay dormant for a while, Twenty years
after the pioneering work of Brin and Pesin [13] the next big development in the
theory of partially hyperbolic systems appeared in the work of C. Pugh, M. Shub
and their students among whom A. Wilkinson stands out. Notice that Anosov’s
concept of absolute continuity plays the central role in these developments. This
has become a major research area with many outstanding practitioners. Some of
the top names are M. Viana, F. Rodriguez Hertz and Wilkinson.
Non-uniformly hyperbolic dynamics developed by Pesin immediately attracted
great attention. Among the early work there are important papers by D. Ruelle,
R. Mañé, Pugh and Shub, M. Herman, A. Fathi and J.-C.Yoccoz
This area remains one of the central in the theory of dynamical systems and
listing even most important papers will take too much space.
Smooth ergodic theory deals with ergodic properties of smooth conservative
dynamical systems on smooth manifolds (usually compact) that preserve volume
or, more generally, an absolutely continuous measure. Anosov made two major
contribution into this area. The first of them is a description of ergodic properties
of Anosov systems preserving a smooth measure. The foundation of this work is
a deep analysis of properties of stable and unstable foliations that were discussed
above. Those properties imply that in the discrete time case an Anosov system is
a K-system and, by using later results of Ornstein and his school, also a Bernoulli
system. In the continuous time case, Anosov’s result is even more remarkable since
it connects ergodic properties of Anosov flows with topology. Namely, a volume-
reserving Anosov flow either has a continuous spectrum or is a suspension over an
Anosov diffeomorphism f defined over a certain global smooth transverse section S.
Here suspension is understood as in algebraic topology, i.e. the return time to the
section S is constant. Using the terminology of the theory of dynamical systems,
this is the special flow of the diffeomorphism f with a constant roof function. This is
the famous “Anosov alternative” that, in particular, implies that any eigenfunction
of an Anosov flow is smooth. As in the case of discrete time, an Anosov flow
with continuous spectrum is a K-flow and a Bernoulli flow. Anosov’s approach
 DMITRY VIKTOROVICH ANOSOV: HIS LIFE AND MATHEMATICS 19

to the study of ergodic properties of conservative dynamical systems based on the

investigation of deep and subtle properties of stable and unstable foliations is the
foundation of several central directions of this area that greatly developed in the
last 50 years.

Approximations in smooth dynamics and ergodic systems on arbi-

trary manifolds. Anosov’s second contribution to smooth ergodic theory is of a
different nature. Beginning from the appearance of ergodic theory as a method of
analysis of classical dynamical systems in the early 1930s and till the end of 1960s
ergodic properties had been successfully studied only for a limited class of systems
of algebraic origin (translations and linear flows on the torus, nil-flows, horocycle
flows on surfaces of constant negative curvature, and so on), for some systems that
are closely related to those algebraic systems (e.g. flows obtained by a time change
in a linear flow on a 2-torus), and, of course, for Anosov systems. In all these cases,
topology of the phase space is rather special. For example, there were no methods of
constructing area-preserving ergodic diffeomorphisms on the 2-dimensional sphere
or the 2-dimensional disk. This problem was solved in our joint work with Anosov
[11] that was mentioned in the first part of this article. We developed a new method
of constructing systems with interesting, often exotic, ergodic properties on every
manifold that allows a non-trivial action of the circle, i.e. the compact group R/Z.
As I described above, the original highly unusual idea of this method that does
not have analogues in dynamics or in analysis, was suggested by Anosov. Later
both authors developed applications of this method that became the central tool in
the study of so-called Liouvillean phenomena in dynamics. Anosov [6] published a
proof that every manifold of dimension greater than 2 admits a volume-preserving
ergodic flow. Results like that require another ingredient that allows to pass from
some simple manifolds that allow a circle action to arbitrary manifolds.
For a brief description of the method we follow [15]. Let M be a differentiable
manifold with a nontrivial smooth circle action S = {St }t∈R , St+1 = St . Every
smooth S 1 action preserves a smooth volume ν which can be obtained
1 by taking any
volume μ and averaging it with respect to the action: ν = 0 (St )∗ μdt. Similarly
S preserves a smooth Riemannian metric on M obtained by averaging of a smooth
Riemannian metric. Fairly representative models are rotations of the disc around
its center and of the two-dimensional sphere around any fixed axis that preserve
Lebesgue measure.
Denote by Cq the subgroup of S 1 with q elements, i.e the qth roots of unity.
Volume preserving maps with various interesting topological and ergodic prop-
erties are obtained as limits of volume preserving periodic transformations
(2.1) f = lim fn , where fn = Hn Sαn+1 Hn−1
n→∞

with αn = pn
qn ∈ Q and

(2.2) Hn = h1 ◦ ... ◦ hn ,
where every hn is a volume preserving diffeomorphism of M that satisfies
(2.3) hn ◦ Sαn = Sαn ◦ hn .
Equivalently, hn has to commute with the action of the finite group Cqn . To achieve
that one maps a fundamental domain for this group to another fundamental domain
20 ANATOLE KATOK

(e.g. to itself in the simplest case that already leads to highly non-trivial results)
and then extends the diffeomorphism periodically on the rest of the space.
Usually at step n, the diffeomorphism hn is constructed first, and αn+1 is chosen
afterwards close enough to αn to guarantee convergence of the construction. For
example, it is easy to see that for the limit in (2.1) to exist in the C ∞ topology it
is largely sufficient to ask that
1
(2.4) |αn+1 − αn | ≤ n .
2 qn ||Hn ||C n
The power and fruitfulness of the method depend on the fact that the sequence
of diffeomorphisms fn is made to converge while the conjugacies Hn diverge often
“wildly” albeit in a controlled (or prescribed) way. Dynamics of the circle actions
and of their individual elements is simple and well–understood. In particular, no
element of such an action is ergodic or topologically transitive, unless the circle
action itself is transitive, i.e M = S 1 . To provide interesting asymptotic properties
of the limit typically the successive conjugacies spread the orbits of the circle action
S, and hence also those of its restriction to the subgroup Cq for any sufficiently
large q (that is of course will be much larger than qn ) across the phase space M
making them almost dense (Anosov’s original idea, when he invented this scheme;
he took just one S orbit at each step), or almost uniformly distributed (my first
improvement; here one needs to control a majority of orbits simultaneously), or
approximate another type of interesting asymptotic behavior. Due to the high
speed of convergence this remains true for sufficiently long orbit segments of the
limit diffeomorphism. To guarantee an appropriate speed of approximation extra
conditions on convergence of approximations in addition to (2.4) may be required.

References
[1] D. V. Anosov, Roughness of geodesic flows on compact Riemannian manifolds of negative
curvature (Russian), Dokl. Akad. Nauk SSSR 145 (1962), 707–709. MR0143156
[2] D. V. Anosov, Ergodic properties of geodesic flows on closed Riemannian manifolds of neg-
ative curvature (Russian), Dokl. Akad. Nauk SSSR 151 (1963), 1250–1252. MR0163258
[3] D. V. Anosov, Geodesic flows on closed Riemannian manifolds of negative curvature
(Russian), Trudy Mat. Inst. Steklov. 90 (1967), 209. MR0224110
[4] D. V. Anosov, Tangential fields of transversal foliations in U -systems (Russian), Mat. Za-
metki 2 (1967), 539–548. MR0242190
[5] D.V. Anosov, On a class of invariant sets in smooth dynamical systems (Russian), Proceedings
of the Fifth International conference on non-linear oscillations, vol. 2, 39–45, Inst. Mat. Akad.
Nauk Ukr. SSR, Kiev, 1970.
[6] D. V. Anosov, Existence of smooth ergodic flows on smooth manifolds (Russian), Izv. Akad.
Nauk SSSR Ser. Mat. 38 (1974), 518–545. MR0358863
[7] D. V. Anosov, A note on the Kepler problem, J. Dynam. Control Systems 8 (2002), no. 3,
413–442, DOI 10.1023/A:1016386605889. MR1914450
[8] D. V. Anosov, On the development of the theory of dynamical systems during the past quarter
century, Surveys in modern mathematics, London Math. Soc. Lecture Note Ser., vol. 321,
Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2005, pp. 70–185, DOI 10.1017/CBO9780511614156.006.
MR2166925
[9] D. V. Anosov, Dynamical systems in the 1960s: the hyperbolic revolution, Mathematical
events of the twentieth century, Springer, Berlin, 2006, pp. 1–17, DOI 10.1007/3-540-29462-
7 1. MR2182776
[10] D. V. Anosov and V. L. Golo, Vector fiberings and the K-functor (Russian), Uspehi Mat.
Nauk 21 (1966), no. 5 (131), 181–212. MR0202152
[11] D. V. Anosov and A. B. Katok, New examples of ergodic diffeomorphisms of smooth manifolds
(Russian), Uspehi Mat. Nauk 25 (1970), no. 4 (154), 173–174. MR0281228
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[12] D. V. Anosov and A. B. Katok, New examples in smooth ergodic theory. Ergodic diffeomor-
phisms (Russian), Trudy Moskov. Mat. Obšč. 23 (1970), 3–36. MR0370662
[13] M. I. Brin and Ja. B. Pesin, Partially hyperbolic dynamical systems (Russian), Izv. Akad.
Nauk SSSR Ser. Mat. 38 (1974), 170–212. MR0343316
[14] M.I. Brin and Ja. B. Pesin, D.V. Anosov and our road to partial hyperbolicity, in this volume.
[15] Bassam Fayad and Anatole Katok, Constructions in elliptic dynamics, Ergodic Theory Dy-
nam. Systems 24 (2004), no. 5, 1477–1520, DOI 10.1017/S0143385703000798. MR2104594
[16] John Franks, Anosov diffeomorphisms, Global Analysis (Proc. Sympos. Pure Math., Vol. XIV,
Berkeley, Calif., 1968), Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, R.I., 1970, pp. 61–93. MR0271990
[17] B. Hasselblatt, Review of “On the development of the theory of dynamical systems during
the past quarter century.” by D.V. Anosov, MR2166925 (2007k:37002)
[18] Eberhard Hopf, Statistik der geodätischen Linien in Mannigfaltigkeiten negativer Krümmung
(German), Ber. Verh. Sächs. Akad. Wiss. Leipzig 91 (1939), 261–304. MR0001464
[19] A. B. Katok, Dynamical systems with hyperbolic structure (Russian), Ninth Mathematical
Summer School (Kaciveli, 1971), Izdanie Inst. Mat. Akad. Nauk Ukrain. SSR, Kiev, 1972,
pp. 125–211. Three papers on smooth dynamical systems. MR0377991
[20] A. B. Katok, Ergodic perturbations of degenerate integrable Hamiltonian systems (Russian),
Izv. Akad. Nauk SSSR Ser. Mat. 37 (1973), 539–576. MR0331425
[21] A. B. Katok, Monotone equivalence in ergodic theory (Russian), Izv. Akad. Nauk SSSR Ser.
Mat. 41 (1977), no. 1, 104–157, 231. MR0442195
[22] Anatole Katok, Moscow dynamic seminars of the nineteen seventies and the early
career of Yasha Pesin, Discrete Contin. Dyn. Syst. 22 (2008), no. 1-2, 1–22, DOI
10.3934/dcds.2008.22.1. MR2410944
[23] Anatole Katok and Boris Hasselblatt, Introduction to the modern theory of dynamical sys-
tems, Encyclopedia of Mathematics and its Applications, vol. 54, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 1995. With a supplementary chapter by Katok and Leonardo Mendoza.
MR1326374
[24] Anthony Manning, Axiom A diffeomorphisms have rational zeta functions, Bull. London
Math. Soc. 3 (1971), 215–220. MR0288786
[25] Anthony Manning, There are no new Anosov diffeomorphisms on tori, Amer. J. Math. 96
(1974), 422–429. MR0358865
[26] John N. Mather, Characterization of Anosov diffeomorphisms, Nederl. Akad. Wetensch. Proc.
Ser. A 71 = Indag. Math. 30 (1968), 479–483. MR0248879
[27] J. Moser, On a theorem of Anosov, J. Differential Equations 5 (1969), 411–440. MR0238357
[28] S. E. Newhouse, On codimension one Anosov diffeomorphisms, Amer. J. Math. 92 (1970),
761–770. MR0277004
[29] Ja. B. Pesin, Families of invariant manifolds that correspond to nonzero characteristic ex-
ponents (Russian), Izv. Akad. Nauk SSSR Ser. Mat. 40 (1976), no. 6, 1332–1379, 1440.
MR0458490
[30] Ja. B. Pesin, Characteristic Ljapunov exponents, and smooth ergodic theory (Russian), Us-
pehi Mat. Nauk 32 (1977), no. 4 (196), 55–112, 287. MR0466791

Department of Mathematics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park,

Pennsylvania 16802
E-mail address: [email protected]
URL: http://www.personal.psu.edu/axk29
Contemporary Mathematics
Volume 692, 2017
http://dx.doi.org/10.1090/conm/692/13921

D. V. Anosov and our road to partial hyperbolicity

Michael Brin and Yakov Pesin

Abstract. This paper provides a brief historical account of our interaction
with our advisor and mentor Dmitry Victorovich Anosov and in particular,
our scientific activity in the well-known Anosov- Katok seminar during the
period from 1968 till 1979. We also comment on our joint work on partial
hyperbolicity.

We met Dmitry Viktorovich Anosov in 1968 as third year Mekh-Mat (mathe-

matics department of the Moscow State University) students and we started attend-
ing the Anosov–Katok seminar since its first meeting in the fall of 1969. For a long
time since then our mathematical lives have been tied to and heavily influenced by
these two great mathematicians whom we consider our mentors and advisers and
not only in mathematics. In fact it would have been next to impossible for us to
become professional mathematicians without their constant support and guidance.
In this note we will briefly describe our interaction with Anosov and comment
on our joint work in mathematics during the decade from 1969 till 1979. M.B.
emigrated from the former USSR in 1979 and while Ya.P. stayed in Russia for
another decade his interaction with Anosov has gradually decreased.
Our lives in mathematics started rather well. In 1965 we both graduated with
honors from elite mathematical high schools and successfully passed the entrance
exams to Mekh-Mat which at the time was arguably the best mathematical cen-
ter in the world. Indeed, the decade from the end of the 50s until the end of the
60s is generally considered the golden age of Moscow mathematics [9]. We were
lucky to have our math courses taught by such distinguished mathematicians and
scholars as Efimov (linear algebra), Manin (algebra), Arnold (ordinary differen-
tial equations), Vishik (partial differential equations), Shabat (complex analysis),
Shilov (real analysis). In addition, during our 3rd through 5th years at Mekh-
Mat we greatly benefited from many topics courses and special seminars offered by
stellar faculty. Our undergraduate adviser was Yakov Grigorievich Sinai who was
very popular among students. Naturally, we started to attend the Sinai–Alexeyev
seminar which was then the central arena for those interested in dynamics. At this
time our close interaction with Katok began. He was a graduate student of Sinai
and got his PhD in 1968. On his own initiative he gave topics courses in dynamical
systems and ergodic theory, and this was the only course work in dynamical systems

2010 Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary 37D25, 37D35.

The second author is partially supported by NSF grant DMS-1400027.

2017
c American Mathematical Society

23
24 MICHAEL BRIN AND YAKOV PESIN

we ever had. In the Fall of 1969 we started attending the Anosov–Katok seminar
which became essentially our only connection to mathematics for a decade; for a
more detailed description and history of this seminar see, [12, 13].
By the end of the 60s Mekh-Mat’s golden years were over. Foremost it mani-
fested itself in increased anti-Semitism and general oppression against liberal
thought [7, 8]. Almost no Jews were accepted as either undergraduate or grad-
uate students at Mekh-Mat, and no Jewish faculty were hired. This was the reason
Katok did not have a chance of getting a position at Mekh-Mat and was “lucky” to
get a job at the Central Economics-Mathematics Institute where he was rather free
to do research of his choice. However, he could not continue teaching or run semi-
nars at Mekh-Mat, but Anosov could, and this is how the Anosov–Katok seminar
started.
Anti-Semitism at Mekh-Mat affected both of us enormously. Although we
graduated from Mekh-Mat with honors, and were recommended for the graduate
school by our adviser Sinai and by the Mekh-Mat administration, the department
communist party bureau rejected our applications. In the end M.B. got a job at the
Research Economics Institute of the State Planning Committee and Ya.P. at the
Research Institute of Optical-Physical Measurements. Here we faced a very hard
choice – either to quit mathematics (as many of our classmates did) or to combine
it with our meaningless full time jobs.
Since we were not affiliated with any mathematical institution, our resources to
carry out research in mathematics were very limited and our mathematical future
was quite uncertain. The Anosov–Katok seminar was the main reason and, in fact,
the only possibility for us to stay in mathematics since it allowed us to be abreast
of current developments in dynamical systems, helped us navigate our own research
and discuss our results. The personal qualities of the seminar leaders created an
open and democratic intellectual atmosphere which for us was a kind of escape from
the unpleasant reality of our day-to-day duties at work.
Anosov was the official PhD adviser for both of us and played a vital role in
our mathematical lives. Since he was a student of Pontryagin (who was at the very
top of the Soviet mathematical hierarchy) and obtained spectacular results early
in his career, he quickly advanced to the higher tiers of the Soviet mathematical
establishment. Anosov was a professor of the Moscow State University, a member
of the Steklov Mathematical Institute, a recipient of the prestigious State Prize, a
member of the editorial boards of two top mathematical journals, and a member
of the Higher Attestation Board (the state body charged with certifying higher
scientific degrees). For many mathematicians to reach such a level and stay at
it meant getting involved to a higher or lesser degree in some unethical activities.
Anosov was one of the very few who never compromised on moral issues and, in fact,
often used his influence to correct the wrong. He was one of the best representatives
of the Russian intelligentsia with high self-imposed moral principles. It was his
conscientious decision to always keep his “hands clean”; by the standards of the
time this was a hard choice to make. There was not a drop of anti-Semitism in
him and in fact, he helped quite a few Jewish mathematicians, us in particular.
Although our research at the beginning of the 70s was rather successful, since we
were Jewish and were not affiliated with any mathematical institution, if not for
Anosov it would have been virtually impossible for us to publish our results in any
major mathematical journal and get a PhD.
 D. V. ANOSOV AND OUR ROAD TO PARTIAL HYPERBOLICITY 25

We would like to emphasize that Anosov’s advising style was not of the type
that is common and expected in Western schools: he never proposed any problem to
us to work on and we did not expect him to help us work out technical difficulties
should we face some. Perhaps partly this may be due to the fact that we were
not students at any graduate school. However, when we obtained some interesting
results that we were eager to present and discuss he would be always willing to listen
and express his opinion. From time to time he would provide us with some relevant
recent papers or preprints which otherwise we would not be aware of or able to
find. Most important he was instrumental in helping us publish our major papers
and he did it purely because he considered our results to be a major achievement
in dynamical systems.
Unfortunately many other people “in power” acted differently and did not feel
embarrassed to ask for something in return. For example, publishing one of our
papers with the help of a person “in power” was conditioned on explaining some
results of the paper to a student of this person, so that the student could claim and
publish these results “independently”. Actually this was not considered outrageous
at that time; or, as Anosov put it ”An evil world begets evil morality.”
Soon after we graduated from Mekh-Mat, the Anosov–Katok seminar was
thrown out of the university and moved to the Steklov Mathematical Institute.
We met once a week starting at 5 p.m. to accommodate many of the participants
with full time jobs. It lasted for about 2 hours. At the beginning the entrance to
the building and seminar participation were not controlled. Before long, however,
as part of its anti-Semitic policy, the institute administration demanded that the
list of participants of each seminar be submitted for approval. Anosov’s problem
was that many participants of his seminar were Jewish. He found a way around it
by adding (to the seminar list) fictitious Russian sounding names to please the eye
of the administration.
In 1971 after looking through papers [11, 18] Katok noted to us that it would
be interesting to consider dynamical systems with stable and unstable directions of
not complementary dimensions and pointed out that the frame flow on a manifold
of negative curvature was a natural example of this situation. In about 2 years
we obtained the results which are now considered the foundation of partial hyper-
bolicity. This was a rather bumpy road with progress often followed by setbacks.
We could only work after hours or on weekends thus taking time away from our
families which required understanding, sacrifice and strong support of our wives.
On the positive side, we had frequent long discussions with Anosov and Katok who
were genuinely interested in our work, and this kept us going. As an example,
Brin visited Anosov at his dacha to present a “proof” of ergodicity for a system
with accessibility. The argument was long and convoluted and took about half an
hour. Sharp-minded Anosov thought for about 5 minutes and pointed out a subtle
mistake – one of the sets considered did not need to be measurable which ruined
the argument.
We would like to make a few comments on our work on partial hyperbolicity
[5]. At the beginning we followed the path which Anosov and Sinai developed for
hyperbolic systems [2]: establish the Hölder continuity of the stable and unstable
distributions, their integrability, and the absolute continuity of the stable and un-
stable foliations. However, in the partially hyperbolic case this already required
a substantial modification of the known techniques and introduction of some new
26 MICHAEL BRIN AND YAKOV PESIN

methods. For example, in proving integrability we used a proper version of Per-

ron’s method which works better in the setting of partial hyperbolicity than more
standard Hadamard’s method, and in proving the absolute continuity property we
had to deal with a serious obstacle of possible expansions (albeit at a slower rate)
in the direction transverse to the unstable.
Further, since the stable and unstable invariant foliations are not smooth in gen-
eral, we realized that to prove ergodicity one needed a generalization of the notion
of commutator of vector fields for the non-differentiable setting. Eventually this led
us to the notion of accessibility which we called transitivity of foliations. Anosov
systems obviously have this property. In modern language, the non-differentiable
commutator leads to accessibility through the Brin argument [3].
We understood from the beginning that the classical Hopf argument needed
a substantial modification to work in the settings of partially hyperbolic systems.
Our main result states that accessibility implies ergodicity under the following
additional assumptions: Lipschitz continuity of the central distribution and its
integrability, dynamical coherence (i.e., integrability of center-stable and center-
unstable distributions), and the Lipschitz continuity of the stable and unstable
holonomy maps along the central leaves. While these requirements are strong, it was
not difficult to verify them in the situations we were interested in – group extensions
and, in particular, frame flows. Later major progress in partial hyperbolicity to a
large extent involved removing and/or weakening these conditions [6, 10, 17].
There are three lines at the end of the introduction in our joint paper [5]
which an unprepared reader may consider strange: “The results of Sec. 3 as well
as Theorems 4.1 and 4.2 belong to M. Brin. The results of Sec. 2 belong to Ya.
Pesin. The rest of the results are joint.” The explanation is that when we discussed
our PhD theses with Anosov, he recommended that we explicitly split the results
between the two of us and then added that for two non-Jewish authors this joint
paper would be more than enough for two dissertations but “two Jewish authors
of one paper” must each write an additional separate paper on a different subject.
Following his advice Brin started working on the generisity of ergodicity for frame
flows resulted in [3, 4] and Pesin began working on what later has evolved as the
non-uniform hyperbolicity theory [14–16].
To defend a PhD thesis, someone not in a graduate school needed to have
an official scientific adviser as well as to find a mathematical institution which
would accept his/her thesis for defense. In our case an obvious adviser would be
either Katok or Anosov. Although Katok was more involved with our research,
the chances of finding an institution which would agree to consider a thesis with a
Jewish adviser and a Jewish student were zero. So Anosov was the only choice, and
this was a huge commitment on his behalf. It still took several years after our theses
were completed to get our PhDs. Brin eventually got his PhD in 1975 from the
Kharkov State University thanks to great efforts by Naum Ilyich Akhiezer. Pesin
got his PhD in 1979 from the Gorky State University with support from Leonid
Pavlovich Shilnikov.
Here is the story of how it happened. After several unsuccessful attempts to
find a place for the defense, Anosov made a deal with O, the head of the Scientific
Council at Gorky. O had two graduate students with theses ready to be defended
and he agreed to arrange the three defenses on the same day in exchange for Anosov
ensuring a safe passage of the theses through the Higher Attestation Board. For
 D. V. ANOSOV AND OUR ROAD TO PARTIAL HYPERBOLICITY 27

Anosov it was a rare and very serious compromise with his principles, but he de-
cided it was worth it. As he put it “Yasha, I traded you for two”. As it turned
out the thesis of one of O’s students claimed three theorems of which two were
completely wrong and the third one needed very serious corrections. As a result
that student dropped out and, as Anosov remarked: “it became a fair trade”. The
deal notwithstanding, the positive outcome was not guaranteed. Unexpected help
came from Evgeniya Aleksandrovna Leontovich-Andronova, the widow of a famous
mathematician Andronov and a prominent member of the Scientific Council. At
the end of the defense proceedings she said: “When my husband was alive, this
work would result in a Doctor of Science degree1 , years later it would be considered
an outstanding PhD thesis, and now we are thinking whether to vote yes or no”.
Actually, there were still two negative votes.
We remember with pleasure the many hours we spent talking to Anosov at
his home about mathematics as well as many other subjects. The atmosphere was
very welcoming, and often his mother would bring out tea and cookies. Anosov was
raised in a family of prominent scientists and had a large library at home. He was
interested in and knew history very well, appreciated art and music. On occasion
one could observe some elements of a “nobleman-among-peasants” in his demeanor
which became more pronounced in later years. Anosov possessed a great sense of
humor, and his remarks were often sharp and ironic. Some examples of this can be
found in the introduction to his famous book on geodesic flows [1]. For instance,
commenting on the Hadamard–Perron theorem he writes: “Every five years or so, if
not more often, someone “discovers” the theorem of Hadamard and Perron, proving
it either by Hadamard’s method or by Perron’s. I myself have been guilty of this”.
In 1991 the University of Maryland held a dynamical systems conference. Fresh
from Russia Anosov entered the room in the middle of a talk, and after the talk was
over many participants (quite a few of them Russian) rushed to greet the master.
His immediate remark was: “let us rename the conference Anosov’s seminar and
make Russian the conference language”. Anosov’s next stop was Penn State where
he gave a colloquium talk. When he was running overtime, the colloquium chair
interrupted him saying that his time was up. Anosov asked if there was time for
questions. “Certainly”, replied the chair, “OK”, said Anosov, “then I will ask myself
a question”. He then continued for another 15 minutes uninterrupted.
There was a common perception among quite a few Russian mathematicians
in the 60s and 70s that a real mathematician should know if not all of mathemat-
ics then at least most of its major branches. Although this was hardly possible,
some came rather close to this ideal. Anosov was one of them, his knowledge of
mathematics was amazingly broad and deep. This manifested itself in his role as an
editor. The books and papers he edited range from topology to geometry to dynam-
ical systems and contain numerous footnotes, long and substantive introductions
and remarks. For Anosov this was a way to express his mathematical views.
Anosov’s name is forever a part of the theory of dynamical systems. We are
proud and fortunate that Dmitry Victorovich Anosov was our teacher and mentor.

1 The second degree after PhD, see [13].

28 MICHAEL BRIN AND YAKOV PESIN

References
[1] D. V. Anosov, Geodesic flows on closed Riemann manifolds with negative curvature., Pro-
ceedings of the Steklov Institute of Mathematics, No. 90 (1967). Translated from the Russian
by S. Feder, American Mathematical Society, Providence, R.I., 1969. MR0242194
[2] D. Anosov and Y. Sinai, Some smooth ergodic systems, Russian Math. Surveys, 22:5 (1967)
103–167.
[3] M. I. Brin, Topological transitivity of a certain class of dynamical systems, and flows of
frames on manifolds of negative curvature (Russian), Funkcional. Anal. i Priložen. 9 (1975),
no. 1, 9–19. MR0370660
[4] M. I. Brin, The topology of group extensions of C-systems (Russian), Mat. Zametki 18 (1975),
no. 3, 453–465. MR0394764
[5] M. I. Brin and Ja. B. Pesin, Partially hyperbolic dynamical systems (Russian), Izv. Akad.
Nauk SSSR Ser. Mat. 38 (1974), 170–212. MR0343316
[6] Keith Burns and Amie Wilkinson, On the ergodicity of partially hyperbolic systems, Ann. of
Math. (2) 171 (2010), no. 1, 451–489, DOI 10.4007/annals.2010.171.451. MR2630044
[7] You failed your math test, comrade Einstein, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.,
Hackensack, NJ, 2005. Adventures and misadventures of young mathematicians or test your
skills in almost recreational mathematics; Edited by M. Shifman. MR2145211
[8] Edward Frenkel, Love and math, Basic Books, New York, 2013. The heart of hidden reality.
MR3155773
[9] Golden years of Moscow mathematics: History of Mathematics, 6, AMS, Edited by S.
Zdravkovska and P. Duren.
[10] Matthew Grayson, Charles Pugh, and Michael Shub, Stably ergodic diffeomorphisms, Ann.
of Math. (2) 140 (1994), no. 2, 295–329, DOI 10.2307/2118602. MR1298715
[11] Leon W. Green, Group-like decompositions of Riemannian bundles, Recent advances in topo-
logical dynamics (Proc. Conf. Topological Dynamics, Yale Univ., New Haven, Conn., 1972;
in honor of Gustav Arnold Hedlund), Springer, Berlin, 1973, pp. 120–139. Lecture Notes in
Math., Vol. 318. MR0400310
[12] Anatole Katok, Moscow dynamic seminars of the nineteen seventies and the early
career of Yasha Pesin, Discrete Contin. Dyn. Syst. 22 (2008), no. 1-2, 1–22, DOI
10.3934/dcds.2008.22.1. MR2410944
[13] A. Katok, Dmitry Victorovich Anosov: His life and mathematics, in this volume.
[14] Ya. Pesin, Lyapunov characteristic exponents and ergodic properties of smooth dynamical
systems with an invariant measure, Sov. Math. Dokl., 17:1 (1976) 196–199.
[15] Ya. Pesin, Families of invariant manifolds corresponding to non-zero characteristic expo-
nents, Math. USSR Izvestija, 40:6 (1976) 1261–1305.
[16] Ja. B. Pesin, Characteristic Ljapunov exponents, and smooth ergodic theory (Russian), Uspehi
Mat. Nauk 32 (1977), no. 4 (196), 55–112, 287. MR0466791
[17] F. Rodriguez Hertz, M. A. Rodriguez Hertz, and R. Ures, Accessibility and stable ergodicity
for partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms with 1D-center bundle, Invent. Math. 172 (2008),
no. 2, 353–381, DOI 10.1007/s00222-007-0100-z. MR2390288
[18] Richard Sacksteder, Strongly mixing transformations, Global Analysis (Proc. Sympos. Pure
Math., Vol. XIV, Berkeley, Calif., 1968), Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, R. I., 1970, pp. 245–
252. MR0415684

Department of Mathematics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland

20742
E-mail address: [email protected]

Department of Mathematics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Penn-

sylvania 16802
E-mail address: [email protected]
Contemporary Mathematics
Volume 692, 2017
http://dx.doi.org/10.1090/conm/692/13916

Escape from large holes in Anosov systems

Valentin Afraimovich and Leonid Bunimovich

Abstract. In the article we obtain estimates for the amount of points that
go trough a hole in the phase space of an Anosov system, provided that this
hole is an element of a Markov partition. Moreover, we describe invariant
sets that remain to stay out of the hole for all instants of time and estimate
the survival probability. For algebraic automorphisms of torus these estimates
become exact formulas.

1. Introduction
A traditional problem in dynamical systems (DS) theory is to study the process
of escape through a hole when the size of the hole is negligibly small (see [?BY1],
[8], [11], and references therein). The problem was studied mainly by using ideas
and methods from probability theory. If the size of the hole is large, a topological
approach was proposed in [2] and successfully applied to dynamical systems gen-
erated by Markov maps of the interval with a hole being an element of a Markov
partition. The problem is closely related to the study of perturbation propogation
through dynamical networks ([1], [6],[3]) so the study of the escape rate problem
can be applied to analysis of dynamical networks, which makes the problem even
more attractive.
Let us also remark that in [5] fractal (and multifractal) properties of escape
time were studied for DS generated by Markov maps of the interval.
In this article we generalize results from [2] to the case of Anosov systems. We
consider here DS with discrete time. Let us recall that a DS generated by a differ-
entiable map f : M Ñ M of a smooth manifold M is Anosov if: (i) for all x P M
the tangent space Tx M splits into stable and unstable subspaces Tx M “ Exs ‘ Exu
and (ii) there are constants C ą 0 and 0 ă λ ă 1 independent of x such that for
all n ě 0
||Dx f n ξ||Tf n pxq M ď Cλn ||ξ||Tx M
if ξ P Exs ,
||Dx f ´n η||Tf ´n pxq M ď Cλn ||η||Tx M
if η P Exu .
A Bowen theorem ([7]) tells us that for any sufficiently small ą 0 there exists
a finite generating Markov partition whose elements have diameter less than (see
[9] for a short proof). Thus, as in [2] we may (and will) use topological Markov
chains to study the escape time problem.

2010 Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary 37C99.

2017
c American Mathematical Society
29
30 VALENTIN AFRAIMOVICH AND LEONID BUNIMOVICH

Let us recall some notions related to Markov partitions for Anosov maps. De-
note by Ws pxqpWu pxqq the -ball on the stable (unstable) manifold of the point
x centered at x. Proposition 6.4.13 of the book [12] tells us that: (i) there exists
δ ą 0 such that if distpx, yq ă δ then Ws pxq X Wu pyq ‰ H, and (ii) there exists
ą 0 such that this intersection, denoted by rx, ys, contains no more than one
point. Furthermore, (see, for instance, Definition 18.7.1 in [12] and/or Definition

4.73 in [9]) a set R is called a rectangle if diam R ă 10 and rx, ys P R for each
pair x, y P R. A rectangle is proper if R “ clospint Rq. A Markov partition of M
is a finite cover R “ tR0 , . . . , Rm´1 u of M by proper rectangles Ri with disjoint
interiors such that if x P intpRi q and f pxq P intpRj q then WRuj pf pxqq Ă f pWRui pxqq
and f pWRs i pxqq Ă WRs j pf pxqq where WRi pxq “ Wi pxq X R, i “ u, s.
If M “ T2 and f is an algebraic automorphism then rectangles Ri are just
parallelograms (or standard rectangles), (see, for instance, [12]).

2. Set up
We will follow the scheme of the article [2]. Let f : M Ñ M be an Anosov dif-
feomorphism and R “ tR0 , . . . , Rm´1 u be a generating Markov partition. Introduce
an oriented graph G containing m vertices v0 , v1 , . . . , vm´1 such that there exists an
edge starting at vi and ending at vj iff f pint Ri q X int Rj ‰ H. Consider now m ˆ m
transition matrix A with entries aij P t0, 1u such that aij “ 1 iff there exists an edge
in the graph G starting at vi and ending at vj . Therefore, a two-sided topological
Markov chain (tMc) pσ, ΩA q is well-defined where ΩA is the set of all admissible
sequences i “ p. . . i´1 i0 i1 . . . ik . . . q, ik P t0, 1, . . . , m ´ 1u, i.e. aik ik`1 “ 1, k P Z.
ř8
Moreover, ΩA is endowed with a metric dpi, jq “ ´8 |ikb´j |k|
k|
, b ą 1, preserving the
direct product topology, so that ΩA is a complete metric space and the shift map
σ : ΩA Ñ ΩA , pσiqk “ ik`i , is continuous. The map f is semi-conjugated to σ. In
other words, the following proposition holds (see, for instance, [12], [9]).
Proposition 1. There exists a continuous finite-to-one coding map χ : ΩA Ñ
M such that χ ˝ σ “ f ˝ χ. The map χ is one-to-one on the set χ´1 pΛq where
Λ “ M z YiPZ f i pB s R Y B u Rq and B s R “ Yi B s Ri , B u R “ Yi B u Ri
It is well known that many features of the dynamical system generated by f
have their counterparts in the symbolic system pσ, ΩA q, in particular if the sym-
bolic system has positive topological entropy then the same is true for the system
generated by f , and if M “ T2 and f is an algebraic automorphism then both
systems have the same topological entropy.

3. Induced open dynamical system

We introduce a new map fi : M Ñ M as follows
"
f pxq, x R Ri
(1) fi pxq “
x, x P Ri
i.e. each point inside Ri is a fixed point of fi . Thus we obtain m open dynamical
systems generated by fi “ M Ñ M, i “ 0, 1, . . . , m´1, induced by f . The partition
R will remain Markov for fi but the corresponding graph, say Gi , and the transition
m´1
matrix Ai “ tasr piqus,r“0 become different.
 ESCAPE FROM LARGE HOLES IN ANOSOV SYSTEMS 31

In fact, its entry is aij “ δij , the Kronecker symbol, j “ 0, . . . , m ´ 1. In other

words, the state “i” is the sink. We will use below the topological Markov chain
tMC pσ, ΩAi q. Given n ě 0 let
Xpi, nq “ tx P M |f n x P Ri , f k x R Ri , 0 ď k ď nu
“ tx P M |fin P Ri , fik x R Ri , 0 ď k ď nu
Y pi, nq “ tx P M |f k x P Ri , for some k, 0 ď k ď nu
“ tx P M |fik x P Ri , for some k, 0 ď k ď nu
So Xpi, nqpY pi, nqq consists of the points in M such that the trajectory of the
DS generated by f going through each of them intersects Ri for the first time at
the instant n (at the instant k, 0 ď k ď n).
It is clear that, Xpi, n1 qXXpi, n2 q “ H, n1 ‰ n2 , and Y pi, nq “ Ynl“0 Xpi, lq, Y pi, nq
“ tx P M, fin pxq P Ri u.
Therefore, for an arbitrary measure on M
n
ÿ
μpY pi, nqq “ μpXpi, lqq.
l“0

The measure μpXpi, nqq can be treated as the probability that an orbit of f hits
the hole Ri for the first time at the instant n, and μpY pi, nqq is the probability that
an orbit hit the hole Ri at some instant k, 0 ď k ď n. Moreover, the quantity
Pn pfi q “ 1 ´ μpY pi, nqq can be treated as a survival probability at the instant n.
Let Γpi, nq “ Yri0 i1 . . . in´1 is be the set of all points of all non-empty cylinders
in ΩAi of length n ` 1 ended by the symbol i. It follows from the definition that
(2) χpΓpi, nqq “ Y pi, nq
and since
(3) Xpi, nq “ Y pi, nqzY pi, n ´ 1q,
(4) χpΓpi, nqzΓpi, n ´ 1qq “ Xpi, nq

4. Algebraic automorphism of the torus

To clarify main ideas of our approach we consider algebraic automorphisms of
T2 . Such an automorphism is determined by a map f px, yq “ pb11 x ` b12 y, b21 x `
b22 yq mod 1 of the torus where bij P Z and | det B| “ 1, B “ pbij q2i,j“1 . Let λ1 , λ2
be the eigenvalues of B so |λ1 λ2 | “ 1. We assume that |λ1 | ą 1, |λ2 | ă 1, i.e. f is
an Anosov diffeomorphism.
m´1
Introduce the matrix Qi “ pqsr qs,r“0 such that qsr “ asr piqpr , pi “ 1, pj “
|λ2 |, j ‰ i, i.e. Qi “ Ai diagpp0 , p1 , . . . , pm´1 q. Each element Rj of the partition R is
a parallelogram with sides parallel to the eigenvectors of the matrix B corresponding
to the eigenvalues λ1 and λ2 . Denote by lk pRj q the length of the side of the
parallelogram Rj that is parallel to the eigenvector related to λk , k “ 1, 2, so that
μpRj q “ l1 pRj ql2 pRi q sin α, where μ is the Lebesgue measure (area) on T2 .
Theorem 1.
m´1
ÿ pnq l1 pRi q
(5) μpY pi, nqq “ qji μpRj q
j“0
l1 pRj q
pnq
where qsk are the entries of the matrix Qn .
32 VALENTIN AFRAIMOVICH AND LEONID BUNIMOVICH

Proof. We consider, first, the case n “ 1 and show that

m´1
ÿ l1 pRi q
μpY pi, 1qq “ qij μpRj q .
j“0
l1 pRj q

Indeed,
(a) qii “ aii piq “ 1;
(b) if aji piq “ 0 then f ´1 pint Ri q X int Rj “ H, so μpfi´1 pRi q X Rj q “ 0;
l1 pRi q
(c) if aji “ 1 then μpfi´1 pRi q X Rj q “ |λ´11 |l2 pRj ql1 pRi q sin α “ |λ2 |μpRj q l1 pRj q .

Thus

μpY pi, 1qq “ μpRi Yj pfi´1 pRi q X Rj qq

m´1
ÿ l1 pRi q
“ μpRi q ` aji piq|λ2 |μpRj q
j“0
l 1 pRj q
j‰i
m´1
ÿ l1 pRi q
“ qji μpRj q
j“0
l1 pRj q

We can rewrite it as
ÿ l1 pRi q
(6) μpY pi, 1qq “ μpY pi, 0qq ` |λ2 | aji piqμpRj q
l1 pRj q
rj,is

For n “ 2, we have (taking into account that ais piq “ qis “ 0)

¨ ˛
m´1 m´1 m´1
ÿ p2q l1 pRi q ÿ ˚ÿ l1 pRi q
qji μpRj q “ |λ2 |2 ajs piqasi piq ` |λ2 |aji piq‚μpRj q
‹
l1 pRj q l1 pRj q
˝
j“0 j“0 s“0
j‰i s‰i
m´1
ÿ l1 pRi q
` qis qsi μpRi q
s“0
l1 pRj q
m´1
ÿ l1 pRi q
“ |λ2 |2 ajs piqasi piqμpRj q ` μpY pi, 1qq
j,s“0
l1 pRj q
j,s‰i
“ μpY pi, 2qq

The last equality holds because of the fact that μpRj X fi´1 pRs X fi´1 pRi qqq “
|λ2 | l2 pRj ql1 pRi q sin α “ |λ2 |2 μpRj q ll11pR
2 pRi q
jq
if ajs piqasi piq “ 1. Thus (5) is true for
n “ 2. We can rewrite it as
ÿ l1 pRi q
(7) μpY pi, 2qq “ μpY pi, 1qq ` |λ2 |2 ajs piqasi piqμpRj q
l1 pRj q
rj s is

where the sum is taken over all non-empty cylinders of the tMc pσ, ΩAi q such that
j ‰ i, s ‰ i.
 ESCAPE FROM LARGE HOLES IN ANOSOV SYSTEMS 33

In the same way, by induction, we obtain the formula (5) by an arbitrary n ą 0.

The formula can be rewritten as
μpY pi, nqq “ μpY pi, n ´ 1qq `
˜ ¸
n´2
n
ÿ ź l1 pRi q
(8) |λ2 | ajs1 piq ask sk`1 piq asn´1 i piqμpRj q
k“1
l 1 pRj q
rjs1 s2 ...sn´1 is

where the sum is taken over all nonempty cylinders of the tMc pσ, ΩAi q such that
j ‰ i and sk ‰ i, k “ 1, . . . , n ´ 1 
Corollary 1. Since Y pi, n ´ 1q Ă Y pi, nq and because of the formula (3) we
obtain from (8) that
μpXpi, nqq “ μpY pi, nqq ´ μpY pi, n ´ 1qq
˜ ¸
n´2
ÿ ź l1 pRi q
(9) “ |λ2 |n ajs1 piq ask sk`1 piq asn´1i piqμpRj q
k“1
l 1 pRj q
rjs1 s2 ...sn´1 is

Corollary 2.
m´1
ÿ pnq pn´1q l1 pRi q
(10) μpXpi, nqq “ pqji ´ qji qμpRj q .
j“0
l1 pRj q
So, we have obtained exact formulas for the escape probabilities.
The formula (9) can be treated in another way. Introduce pm ´ 1q ˆ pm ´ 1q-
matrix that is obtained from the matrix Ai (or A) by removing the i-th column
and the i-th row. Denote this matrix by A´ ´
i . The entries of Ai are 0 or 1, so it
´
corresponds to a graph, say Gi , with m ´ 1 vertices vk , k “ 0, . . . , m ´ 1, k ‰ i,
and the edges joining vertices vk and vs iff aks “ 1.
We call the vertex vk to be an α-vertex if there is no vertex vs such that
ask “ 1, and an ω-vertex if theres is no vertex vs such that aks “ 1. Remove
α and ω vertices from G´ ´
i and obtain a new graph, say Gi p1q, again perform
´
this procedure and obtain Gi p2q, etc. After finitely many steps we obtain either
empty set or a graph, say Γi in which there are no α or ω-vertices. We ignore
the first possibility and denote the corresponding matrix by Hi , and the tMc by
pσ, ΩHi q. Let us recall that the symbolic complexity Cn pσ, ΩHi q is the number of
all admissible non-empty cylinders of the length n. The following formula holds
(see, for instance [4])
Cn pσ, ΩHi q “ E T Hin´1 E
T
where E “ p1 1 . . . 1q and E is the corresponding column.
Corollary 3. The following estimate holds
(11) K2 |λ2 |n Cn pσ, ΩHi q ď μpXpi, nqq ď K1 |λ2 |n Cn pσ, ΩHi q
where K1 , K2 are a constants independent of n.
Proof. Since
ÿ n´1
ź
Un :“ ajsi piq ask sk`1 piq
rjs0 ...sn´1 is i“1

is the number of all admissible words determined by the matrix A´ i (the corre-
sponding paths in the graph G´i might contain α and ω-vertices) and Cn pHi q is
34 VALENTIN AFRAIMOVICH AND LEONID BUNIMOVICH

the number of all admisible words determined by the matrix Hi (the correspond-
ing paths in Γi contain neither α nor ω-vertices) then evidently Un ě Cn pHi q.
Therefore, the formula (9) implies that the estimate from below in (11) holds with
l1 pRi q
(12) K2 “ min μpRj q .
j l1 pRj q
To estimate Un from above, one first should take into account the fact that if j or
sk in Un , k ď n ´ 1, corresponds to an ω-vertex then the corresponding term in
the sum Un equals 0. So without loss of generality one may consider in Un only
cylinders rjs1 , s2 . . . sn´1 is with symbols different from those denoting ω-vertices.
Second, let us remark that the number of steps, say m0 , needed to obtain the
final graph Γ from inductively determined graphs G´ i pkq, k “ 1, . . . , can not be
greater than pm ´ 1q!. Indeed, the number of α-vertices in G´ i can not be greater
than m ´ 1. If there exist s such vertices, s ě 1, then the number of α-vertices in
the graph G´ i (1) can not be greater than pm ´ s ´ 1q, etc. So, m0 ď pm ´ 1q!
Third, every cylinder rj0 , . . . jn´1 s is a concatenation of the cylinders rj0 ,
. . . jm0 ´1 s and rjm0 , jm0 `1 , . . . , jn´1 s provided that n ´ 1 ą m0 . Thus,

(13) Un ď Km0 ¨ Cn´1´m0 pHi q

where Km0 is the number of admissible words of the lenght m0 with respect to the
matrix Ai . Evidently Km0 ď mm0 . Let
Cn´1´m0 pHi q
Sm0 “ sup
nąm0 `1 Cn pHi q
then

(14) Un ď Km0 ¨ Sm0 ¨ Cn pHi q

and (11) holds with

l1 pRi q
(15) K1 “ Km0 ¨ Sm0 ¨ max μpRj q .
j l1 pRj q


Remark 1. If there are no α-vertices in the graph G´

i then (11) holds with

l1 pRi q l1 pRi q
K1 “ max μpRj q , K2 “ min μpRj q .
j l1 pRj q j l1 pRj q
One can check that exactly such a case occurs for the example 1 below.

Corollary 3 implies that if htop pσ, ΩHi q :“ hi ą 0 then Cn pσ, ΩHi q behaves
asymptotically as n Ñ 8 like ehi n , and (11) implies

(16) K̃2 pλ2 ehi qn ď μpXpi, nqq ď K̃1 pλ2 ehi qn

By using (11) (or (16)) one may compare different elements of the Markov
partition according to their ability to produce different rates of escape.
 ESCAPE FROM LARGE HOLES IN ANOSOV SYSTEMS 35

5. The survival probabilities and escape rates

In our case the survival probability is μn :“ μ Xn´1
` ´k
˘
k“0 f pM zRi q and the
escape rate is ´γi where γi “ limnÑ8 n1 log μ Xn´1
` ´k
˘
k“0 f pM zRi q , see [10] and
references therein.
For Anosov systems generated by algebraic automorphisms one may obtain
exact formulas.
Theorem 2. The survival probability
n´2
ÿ ź l1 pRsn´1 q
(17) μn “ |λ2 |n ask sk`1 μpRs0 q
l1 pRs0 q
rs0 ...sn´1 s k“0
sk ‰i

where the sum is taken over all words that do not contain the symbol i.
The proof of Theorem is the same as the one for Theorem 1.
Corollary 4. The following estimates hold
(18) K̃2 |λ2 |n Cn pσ, ΩHi q ď μn ď K̃1 |λ2 |n Cn pσ, ΩHi q
where K̃1 , K̃2 are constants and Cn pσ, ΩHi q is the complexity function for tMc
pσ, ΩpHi qq.
The prove is the same as that for Corollary 3 and constants K̃2 , K̃1 can be
determined similarly to K2 , K1 . In particular, if there are no α-vertices in the
graph G´i then K̃1 “ K1 , K̃2 “ K2

Corollary 5. If the topological entropy hi of tMc pσ, ΩHi q is positive then the
escape rate is ´γi where
(19) γi “ ln |λ2 | ` hi .
The result is consistent with [10] where the escape rate is presented through a
pressure and here (19) is, in fact, the topological pressure over tMc pσ, ΩHi q with
respect to a constant potential.
Thus, the more complex the invariant set consisting of trajectories that do not
go to the hole is the greater the survival probability is (and the smaller the escape
rate).
Example 1. For the Arnold cat map generated by the matrix
ˆ ˙
2 1
B“
1 1
? ?
(and having Lyapunov exponents λ1 “ lnp 3`2 5 q, λ2 “ lnp 3´2 5 q)
there exists a Markov partition {Δ0 , Δ1 , . . . , Δ4 } corresponding to the transi-
tion matrix ¨ ˛
1 1 0 1 0
˚1 1 0 1 0‹
˚ ‹
B“˚ ˚1 1 1 1 0‹
‹
˝0 0 0 1 1‚
0 0 0 1 1
?
see, for instance [13]. One can check that hi “ ln 2, i ‰ 1, and h1 “ lnp 32 ` 25 q, so,
the escape through the hole Δ1 occurs with maximal survival probability. Moreover
γ1 “ 0, therefore μn decreases sub-exponentially as n Ñ 8.
36 VALENTIN AFRAIMOVICH AND LEONID BUNIMOVICH

6. Multidimensional automorphisms
The theorem and its corollaries may be generalized for multidimensional auto-
morphisms
´ř of Tk , k ą 2.¯ The Anosov system here is generated by f px1 . . . xn q “
k řk
s“1 b1s xs , s“1 bks xs mod 1, bij P Z, | det B| “ 1, B “ pbij qki,j“1 .
We assume that this automorphism is hyperbolic, so that the eigenvalues of B,
say ρ1 , ρ2 , . . . , ρk are partitioned by two groups, say, ρ1 , . . . , ρt , with |ρs | ă 1, s “
śt śk
1, . . . , t and |ρs | ą 1, s “ t ` 1, . . . , k. Let λ1 “ s“1 ρs , λ2 “ s“t`1 ρs . Again
|λ1 λ2 | “ 1.
Then we proceed exactly as for k “ 2: (i) introduce the matrices Ai , Qi “
Ai diagpp0 , p1 , . . . , pm´1 q, pi “ 1, pj “ |λ2 |, j ‰ i. Elements of the Markov partition,
so called rectangles, are no not necessarily ”good” geometric bodies, so an analogue
to the Theorem 1 will be formulated in a slightly different way:
Theorem 3.
m´1
pnq
ÿ
(20) μpY pi, nqq “ qji νji
j“0

where νpi, jq are positive constants depending on the Markov partition

Scheme of the proof. It is well known that the Lebesque measure is the only
measure of maximal entropy of the DS generated by a hyperbolic automorphism
of the torus and the entropy h “ ln |λ2 |. Moreover, given a Markov partition
and the corresponding tM cpσ, ΩA q, the only measure of maximal entropy for the
tM cpσ, ΩA q is the Parry measure and the entropy also equals ln |λ2 | (see [12] and
references therein). In particular, |λ2 | is the maximal eigenvalue of the transition
matrix A. For the sake of convenience let |λ2 | “ λ. Recall that if q “ pq1 , . . . , qm qT
is a positive right eigenvector of A, Aq “ λq and v “ pv, . .ř . , vm q is a positive left
eigenvector of A, vA “ λv, normalized in such a ś way that ni“1 qi vi “ 1 then one
aij vi
defines entries πij “ λv j
of the stochastic matrix “ pπij qni,j“1 and its eigenvector
ś
p “ pp1 , . . . , pm q, pi “ qi vi , p “ p. The Parry measure of the cylinder rjs is pj ,
and the measure, say, of the cylinder i´n , . . . , i0 is
´1
ź ´1
ź
(21) μP pri´n , . . . , i0 sq “ πik ik`1 pi0 “ λ´n p aik ik`1 qvi´n ¨ qi0 .
k“´n k“´n

Taking into account the fact that μP pri´n , . . . , i0 sq is exactly the Lebesque measure
of the intersection Xnk“0 f ´k Rk´n we apply the formula (21) and repeat the proof
of Theorem 1 replacing the constants μpRj q ll11pR pRi q
jq
by vj qi . So, in the formation of
the theorem vji “ vj ¨ qi .
Corollary 2 becomes
Corollary 6.
m´1
pnq pn´1q
ÿ
(22) μpXpi, nqq “ pqji ´ qji qνji
j“0

Formulas (11), (16) are exactly the same as for k “ 2, but now
¨ ˛´1
ź ź
|λ2 | “ |ρs | “ ˝ |ρt |‚
|ρs |ă1 |ρt |ą1
 ESCAPE FROM LARGE HOLES IN ANOSOV SYSTEMS 37

Proofs of all these statements are similar to those for k “ 2, so we do not

present them here.
For dynamical systems generated by multidimensional automorphisms of tori
an analogue of Theorem 2 holds when the eigenvalue λ2 is replaced by the product
of eigenvalues that are less than on by absolute values and the constants μpRs0 q ¨
l1 pRsn´1 q
are replaced by vs0 ¨ qsn´1late . The formulations of corollaries are exactly
l1 pRs0 q
the same as in Section 4.

7. Nonlinear systems
When we deal with a general Anosov system one can not expect to get exact
formulas for the probabilities μpY pi, nqq and μpXpi, nqq. Nevertheless there is a way
to obtain reasonable estimates of these quantities by using the topological pressure
technique, as we did in [2]. Indeed, given the non-empty intersection f ´1 Ri X Rj
let
||Bf pxqξ||
λ1 pj, iq “ inf
||ξ||
||Bf pxqξ||
λ1 pj, iq “ sup
||ξ||
where infimum (supremum) is taken over all ξ P Exu and all x P f ´1 Rj X Ri .
Then, from the matrix Ai we obtain the transition matrix Hi as has been de-
scribed above and introduce the one-sided topological Markov chain pσ, Ω` Hi q where
Ω`Hi “ tpi i
0 1 . . . in´1 qu is the collection of infinite (in one direction) H i -admissible
sequences endowed with the standard distance and σpi0 i1 i2 . . . q “ pi1 i2 . . . q is the
řn´1
shift map. Given a function ϕ : Ω` Hi Ñ R let Sn piq “
k
k“0 ϕpσ iq. For any non-
`
empty cylinder wn “ ri0 . . . in´1 s Ă ΩHi one can define Sn pwn q “ supiPwn Sn piq.
Denote by Wn the collection of all non-empty cylinders of length n and consider a
partition function
ÿ
Γpϕ, nq “ exp Sn pwn q.
wn PWn

Then the topological pressure ppϕq is

ln Γpϕ, nq
lim “ ppϕq
nÑ8 n
see, for instance, [12]. For the functions
φpi0 i1 . . . q :“ ´ ln λ1 pi0 , i1 q,
φpi0 i1 . . . q :“ ´ ln λ1 pi0 , i1 q
let p “ ppϕq, p “ ppϕq. Denote by h the topological entropy of the tMc pσ, ΩHi q.
Conjecture. If h ą 0, p ‰ 0, p ‰ 0 then the following inequalities hold

Keph`pqn ď μpXpi, nqq ď Keph`pqn

where K, K are constants independent of n.
To prove it, maybe, one should impose additional conditions, like smoothness
of the SRB-measure, etc.
38 VALENTIN AFRAIMOVICH AND LEONID BUNIMOVICH

Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank Ya. B. Pesin for useful remarks.

References
[1] Valentin S. Afraimovich and Leonid A. Bunimovich, Dynamical networks: interplay of
topology, interactions and local dynamics, Nonlinearity 20 (2007), no. 7, 1761–1771, DOI
10.1088/0951-7715/20/7/011. MR2335082
[2] V. S. Afraimovich and L. A. Bunimovich, Which hole is leaking the most: a topological
approach to study open systems, Nonlinearity 23 (2010), no. 3, 643–656, DOI 10.1088/0951-
7715/23/3/012. MR2593912
[3] V. S. Afraimovich, L. A. Bunimovich, and S. V. Moreno, Dynamical networks: continuous
time and general discrete time models, Regul. Chaotic Dyn. 15 (2010), no. 2-3, 127–145, DOI
10.1134/S1560354710020036. MR2644325
[4] Valentin Afraimovich and Sze-Bi Hsu, Lectures on chaotic dynamical systems, AMS/IP Stud-
ies in Advanced Mathematics, vol. 28, American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI; In-
ternational Press, Somerville, MA, 2003. MR1956214
[5] V. Afraimovich and R. Vasquez, Spectrum of dimensions for escape time, Discontinuity,
Nonlinearity and Complexity, 2 (2013), 247-262.
[6] Michael Blank and Leonid Bunimovich, Long range action in networks of chaotic elements,
Nonlinearity 19 (2006), no. 2, 329–344, DOI 10.1088/0951-7715/19/2/005. MR2199391
[7] Rufus Bowen, Equilibrium states and the ergodic theory of Anosov diffeomorphisms, Lecture
Notes in Mathematics, Vol. 470, Springer-Verlag, Berlin-New York, 1975. MR0442989
[8] L.A. Bunimovich and A. Yuvchenko, Where to place a hole to achieve fastest escape rate,
Israel J. Math, (2011).
[9] Pierre Collet and Jean-Pierre Eckmann, Concepts and results in chaotic dynamics: a short
course, Theoretical and Mathematical Physics, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2006. MR2266984
[10] Mark F. Demers and Paul Wright, Behaviour of the escape rate function in hyperbolic dynam-
ical systems, Nonlinearity 25 (2012), no. 7, 2133–2150, DOI 10.1088/0951-7715/25/7/2133.
MR2947939
[11] Mark F. Demers and Lai-Sang Young, Escape rates and conditionally invariant measures,
Nonlinearity 19 (2006), no. 2, 377–397, DOI 10.1088/0951-7715/19/2/008. MR2199394
[12] Anatole Katok and Boris Hasselblatt, Introduction to the modern theory of dynamical sys-
tems, Encyclopedia of Mathematics and its Applications, vol. 54, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 1995. With a supplementary chapter by Katok and Leonardo Mendoza.
MR1326374

´
Instituto de Investigación en Comunicación Optica, Universidad Autónoma de San
Luis Potosı́, Karakorum 1470, Lomas 4a. 78220, San Luis Potosı́, México

ABC Math Program and School of Mathematics, Georgia Institute of Technology,

Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0160
Contemporary Mathematics
Volume 692, 2017
http://dx.doi.org/10.1090/conm/692/13915

A dynamical decomposition of the torus into pseudo-circles

François Béguin, Sylvain Crovisier, and Tobias Jäger

To the memory of Dmitri V. Anosov

Abstract. We build an irrational pseudo-rotation of the 2-torus which is

semiconjugate to an irrational rotation of the circle in such a way that all the
fibres of the semi-conjugacy are pseudo-circles. The proof uses the well-known
‘fast-approximation method’ introduced by Anosov and Katok.

1. Introduction
It is well known that continua (connected compact metric spaces) with compli-
cated structure naturally appear in smooth surface dynamics. A striking example
is provided by the pseudo-circle, introduced by Bing [Bi1] and characterized by
Fearnley [Fe]. It is a continuum which:
– can be embedded in S2 and separates,
– is circularly chainable: it admits coverings into compact subsets (Ai )i∈Z/nZ
whose diameter are arbitrarily small, such that Ai ∩ Aj = ∅ if and only if
if i = j ± 1 or i = j,
– is indecomposable: it cannot be written as the union of two proper con-
tinua,
– and whose non-trivial proper subcontinua are indecomposable, homoge-
neous (any point can be sent on any other point by some homeomorphism)
and all homeomorphic to the same topological space (called the pseudo-
arc).
Handel [Ha] has built a smooth diffeomorphism of S2 preserving a minimal
invariant set homeomorphic to the pseudo-circle. Later, Prajs [Pr] has constructed
a partition of the annulus into pseudo-arcs, and likewise his method could be used
to produce partitions of the torus into pseudo-circles. It was not known, however,
if such a pathological foliation could be ‘dynamical’, that is, invariant under the
dynamics of a torus homeomorphism or diffeomorphism that permutes the leaves
of the foliation. Conversely, if a homeomorphism of the two-torus is semiconjugate
to an irrational rotation of the circle, one may wonder whether most, or at least
some, of the fibres of the semi-conjugacy must have a simple structure or even be
topological circles. We give a positive answer to the first and a negative to the
second of these questions. Denote by Td = Rd /Zd the d-dimensional torus and by
Diff ωvol,0 (T ) the space of real-analytic diffeomorphisms of T that are isotopic to
2 2

the identity and preserve the canonical volume.

2010 Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary 37E30, 37E45.

2017
c American Mathematical Society
39
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terribly, so that, had I not kept silence, they would have thrown me
into the Seine.
After she had recanted and abjured, and had resumed the dress of a
man, I and many others were present when Jeanne excused herself
for having dressed again as a man, saying and affirming publicly,
that the English had done or caused to be done to her great wrong
and violence, when she was wearing a woman’s dress; and, in truth, I
saw her weeping, her face covered with tears, disfigured and
outraged in such sort that I was full of pity and compassion.
When Jeanne was proclaimed an obstinate and relapsed heretic, she
replied publicly before all who were present: “If you, my Lords of the
Church, had placed me and kept me in your prisons, perchance I
should not have been in this way.”
After the conclusion and end of this session and trial, the Lord
Bishop of Beauvais said to the English who were waiting outside:
“Farewell![106] be of good cheer: it is done.”
Such difficult, subtle, and crafty questions were asked of and
propounded to poor Jeanne, that the great clerics and learned people
present would have found it hard to reply; and at [these questions]
many of those present murmured.
I was there myself with the Bishop of Avranches,[107] an aged and
good ecclesiastic, who, like the others, had been requested and
prayed to give his opinion on this Case. For this, the Bishop
summoned me before him, and asked me what Saint Thomas said
touching submission to the Church. I sent the decision of Saint
Thomas in writing to the Bishop: “In doubtful things, touching the
Faith, recourse should always be had to the Pope or a General
Council.” The good Bishop was of this opinion, and seemed to be far
from content with the deliberations that had been made on this
subject. His deliberation was not put into writing: it was left out,
with bad intent.
After Jeanne had confessed and partaken of the Sacrament of the
Altar, sentence was given against her, and she was declared heretic
and excommunicate.
I saw and clearly perceived, because I was there all the time, helping
at the whole deduction and conclusion of the Case, that the secular
Judge did not condemn her, either to death or to burning; and
although the lay and secular Judge had appeared and was present in
the same place where she was last preached to and given over to the
secular authority, she was, entirely without judgment or conclusion
of the said Judge, delivered into the hands of the executioner, and
burnt—it being said to the executioner, simply and without other
sentence: “Do thy duty.”
Jeanne had, at the end, so great contrition and such beautiful
penitence that it was a thing to be admired, saying such pitiful,
devout, and Catholic words, that those who saw her in great numbers
wept, and that the Cardinal of England and many other English were
forced to weep and to feel compassion.
As I was near her at the end, the poor woman besought and humbly
begged me to go into the Church near by and bring her the Cross, to
hold it upright on high before her eyes until the moment of death, so
that the Cross on which God was hanging might be in life continually
before her eyes.
Being in the flames, she ceased not to call in a loud voice the Holy
Name of Jesus, imploring and invoking without ceasing the aid of the
Saints in Paradise; again, what is more, in giving up the ghost and
bending her head, she uttered the Name of Jesus as a sign that she
was fervent in the Faith of God, just as we read of Saint Ignatius and
of many other Martyrs.
Immediately after the execution, the executioner came to me and to
my companion, Brother Martin Ladvenu, stricken and moved with a
marvellous repentance and terrible contrition, quite desperate and
fearing never to obtain pardon and indulgence from God for what he
had done to this holy woman. And the executioner said and affirmed
that, notwithstanding the oil, the sulphur, and the charcoal which he
had applied to the entrails and heart of the said Jeanne, in no way
had he been able to burn them up, nor reduce to cinders either the
entrails or the heart, at which he was much astonished, as a most
evident miracle.

Brother Martin Ladvenu, of the Order of Saint Dominic, and of

the Convent of Saint-Jacques at Rouen.
Many of those who appeared in the Court did so more from love of
the English and the favour they bore them than on account of true
zeal for justice and the Catholic Faith. In the extreme prejudice of
Messire Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, there were, I assert, two
proofs of ill-feeling: the first, when the Bishop, acting as Judge,
commanded Jeanne to be kept in the secular prison and in the hands
of her mortal enemies; and although he might easily have had her
detained and guarded in an ecclesiastical prison, yet he allowed her,
from the beginning of the trial to the end, to be tormented and
cruelly treated in a secular prison. Moreover, at the first session or
meeting, the Bishop aforesaid asked and required the opinion of all
present, as to whether it was more suitable to detain her in the
secular ward or in the prisons of the Church. It was decided as more
correct that she be kept in ecclesiastical prisons rather than in the
secular; but this the Bishop said he would not do for fear of
displeasing the English. The second proof was that on the day when
the Bishop and several others declared her a heretic, relapsed, and
returned to her evil deeds, because, in prison, she had resumed a
man’s dress, the Bishop, coming out of the prison, met the Earl of
Warwick and a great many English with him, to whom he said,
laughing, in a loud and clear voice: “Farewell! farewell! it is done; be
of good cheer,” or such-like words.
The Maid revealed to me that, after her abjuration and recantation,
she was violently treated in the prison, molested, beaten, and ill-
used; and that an English lord had insulted her. She also said,
publicly, that on this account she had resumed a man’s dress; and,
towards the end, she said to the Bishop of Beauvais: “Alas! I die
through you, for had you given me over to be kept in the prisons of
the Church, I should not have been here!”
When she had been finally preached to in the Old Market-Place and
abandoned to the secular authority, although the secular Judges
were seated on the platform, in no way was she condemned by any of
these Judges; but, without being condemned, she was forced by two
sergeants to come down from the platform and was taken by the said
sergeants to the place where she was to be burned, and by them
delivered into the hands of the executioner.
And in proof of this, a short time after, one called Georges Folenfant
was apprehended on account of the Faith and for the crime of heresy,
and was in the same way handed over to the secular justice. In this
case, the Judges—to wit, Messire Louis de Luxembourg, Archbishop
of Rouen, and Brother Guillaume Duval, Deputy of the Inquisitor of
the Faith—sent me to the Bailly of Rouen to warn him that the said
Georges should not be treated as was the Maid, who, without final
sentence or definite judgment, had been burned in the fire.
The executioner, about four hours after the burning, said that he had
never been so afraid in executing any criminal as in the burning of
the Maid, and for many reasons: first, for her great fame and
renown; secondly, for the cruel manner of fastening her to the stake
—for the English had caused a high scaffold to be made of plaster,
and, as the said executioner reported, he could not well or easily
hasten matters nor reach her, at which he was much vexed and had
great compassion for the cruel manner in which she was put to
death.
I can testify to her great and admirable contrition, repentance, and
continual confession, calling always on the Name of Jesus, and
devoutly invoking the Saints in Paradise, as also Brother Ysambard
hath already deposed, who was with her to the end, and confirmed
her in the way of salvation.

Brother Guillaume Duval, of the Order of Saint Dominic, and of

the Convent of Saint-Jacques at Rouen.
When the trial of the said Jeanne took place, I was present at one
session with Brother Ysambard de la Pierre; and, although we could
find no room for ourselves in the consistory, we seated ourselves at
the middle of the table, near to Jeanne. When she was questioned or
examined, the said Brother Ysambard advised her as to what she
should say, nudging her or making some other sign. After the session
was over, I and Brother Ysambard, with Maître Jean Delafontaine,
were deputed to visit her in prison the same day after dinner and
give her counsel; we went together to the Castle of Rouen, to visit
and admonish her; and there we found the Earl of Warwick, who
attacked the said Brother Ysambard with great anger and
indignation, biting insults, and harsh epithets, saying to him: “Why
didst thou touch that wicked person this morning, making so many
signs? Mort Bleu! villain! if I see thee again taking trouble to deliver
her and to advise her for her good, I will have thee thrown into the
Seine.” At which I and the other companion of the said Ysambard
fled for fear to the Convent.
I heard no more, for I was not present at the Trial.

Maître Guillaume Manchon, Canon of the Collegiate Church of

Notre Dame d’Audely; Curé of the Parish Church of Sainte-Nicolas-
le-Peinteur at Rouen, and Notary of the Ecclesiastical Court;
Notary of the Trial of Jeanne, from the beginning up to the end, and
with him Maître Guillaume Colles, called Bois-Guillaume.
In my opinion, not only those who had charge of instituting and
conducting the Trial—to wit, My Lord of Beauvais and the Masters
sent for from Paris for this Case—but also the English, at whose
instance the Trial was undertaken, proceeded rather from hatred and
anger on account of the quarrel with the King of France, than owing
to her support of his party, and for the following reasons:
First, one named Maître Nicolas Loyseleur, a familiar of my Lord of
Beauvais, who held altogether to the English side—for, formerly the
King being before Chartres, he went to fetch the King of England to
raise the Siege—pretended that he belonged to the Maid’s country;
by this means he found a way to have speech and familiar converse
with her, telling her news of her country that would please her. He
asked to be her confessor, and of what she told him privately he
found means to inform the Notaries: indeed, at the beginning of the
Trial, I and Boisguillaume, with witnesses, were put secretly in an
adjoining room, where there was a hole through which we could
hear, in order that we might report what she said to Loyseleur. As I
think, what the Maid said or stated familiarly to Loyseleur he
reported to the Notaries; and from this were made memoranda for
questions in the Trial, to find some way of catching her unawares.
When the Trial had begun, Maître Jean Lohier, a grave Norman
Clerk, came to this Town of Rouen, and communication was made to
him of what the Bishop of Beauvais had written hereon; and the said
Lohier asked for two or three days’ delay to look into it. To which he
received answer that he should give his opinion that afternoon; and
this he was obliged to do. And Maître Jean Lohier, when he had seen
the Process, said it was of no value, for several reasons: first, because
it had not the form of an ordinary Process; then, it was carried on in
an enclosed and shut-up place, where those concerned were not in
full and perfect liberty to say their full will; then, that this matter
dealt with the honour of the King of France, whose side she [the
Maid] supported, and that he had not been called, nor any who were
for him; then, neither legal document nor articles had been
forthcoming, and so there was no guide for this simple girl to answer
the Masters and Doctors on great matters, and especially those, as
she said, which related to her revelations. For these things, the
Process was, in his opinion, of no value. At which my Lord of
Beauvais was very indignant against the said Lohier; and although
my Lord of Beauvais told him that he might remain to see the
carrying out of the Trial, Lohier replied that he would not do so. And
immediately my Lord of Beauvais, then lodging in the house where
now lives Maître Jean Bidaut, near Saint Nicolas-le-Peinteur, came
to the Masters—to wit, Maître Jean Beaupère, Maître Jacques de
Touraine, Nicolas Midi, Pierre Maurice, Thomas de Courcelles, and
Loyseleur—and said to them: “This Lohier wants to put fine
questions into our Process: he would find fault with everything, and
says it is of no value. If we were to believe him, everything must be
begun again, and all we have done would be worth nothing!” And,
after stating the grounds on which Lohier found fault, my Lord of
Beauvais added: “It is clear enough on which foot he limps. By Saint
John! we will do nothing in the matter, but will go on with our
Process as it is begun!” This was on a Saturday afternoon in Lent;
and the next morning I spoke with the said Lohier at the Church of
Notre Dame at Rouen, and asked him what he thought of the said
Trial and of Jeanne? He replied: “You see the way they are
proceeding. They will take her, if they can, in her words—as in
assertions where she says, ‘I know for certain,’ as regards the
apparitions; but if she said, ‘I think’ instead of the words ‘I know for
certain’ it is my opinion that no man could condemn her. It seems
they act rather from hate than otherwise; and for that reason, I will
not stay here, for I have no desire to be in it.” And in truth he
thenceforward lived always at the Court of Rome, where he died
Dean of Appeals.[108]
At the beginning of the Trial, because I was putting in writing for five
or six days the answers and excuses of the said Maid, the Judges
several times wished to compel me, speaking in Latin, to put them in
other terms, by changing the sense of her words or in other ways
such as I had not heard. By command of the Bishop of Beauvais, two
men were placed at a window near where the Judges sat, with a
curtain across the window, so that they could not be seen. These two
men wrote and reported what there was in the charge against
Jeanne, keeping silence as to her excuses; and, in my opinion, this
was Loyseleur. After the sitting was over, in the afternoon, while
comparing notes of what had been written, the two others reported
differently from me, and had put in none of the excuses; at which my
Lord of Beauvais was greatly angry with me. [109]Where Nota is
written in the Process there was disagreement, and questions had to
be made upon it; and it was found that what I had written was true.
In writing the said Process, I was often opposed by my Lord of
Beauvais and the Masters, who wanted to compel me to write
according to their fancy, and against what I had myself heard. And
when there was something which did not please them, they forbade it
to be written, saying that it did not serve the Process; but I
nevertheless wrote only according to my hearing and knowledge.
Maître Jean Delafontaine, from the beginning of the Trial up to the
week after Easter, 1431, took the place of my Lord of Beauvais, to
interrogate her, in the absence of the Bishop; and was always present
with the Bishop in the conduct of the said Trial. And when the time
came that the Maid was summoned to submit herself to the Church
by this same Delafontaine, and by Brothers Ysambard de la Pierre
and Martin Ladvenu, they advised her that she should believe in, and
rely on, our Lord the Pope and those who preside in the Church
Militant; and that she should make no question about submitting to
our Holy Father the Pope and to the Holy Council; for that there
were among them as many of her own side as of the other, many of
them notable Clerics, and that if she did not do this, she would put
herself in great danger. The day after she had been thus advised, she
said that she wished certainly to submit to our Holy Father the Pope
and to the Holy Council. When my Lord of Beauvais heard this, he
asked who had spoken with the Maid. The Guard replied that it was
Maître Delafontaine, his lieutenant, and the two Friars. And at this,
in the absence of the said Delafontaine and the Friars, the Bishop
was much enraged against Maître Jean Lemaître, the Deputy
Inquisitor, and threatened to do him an injury. And when
Delafontaine knew that he was threatened for this reason, he
departed from Rouen, and did not again return. And as for the
Friars, they would have been in peril of death, but for the said
Lemaître, who excused them and besought for them, saying that if
any harm were done to them, he would never again come to the Trial.
And, from that time, the Earl of Warwick forbade any one to visit the
Maid, except the Bishop of Beauvais or those sent by him; and the
Deputy Inquisitor was not allowed to go without him.
At the end of the sermon at Saint Ouen, after the abjuration of the
Maid, because Loyseleur said to her, “Jeanne, you have done a good
day’s work, if it please God, and have saved your soul,” she
demanded, “Now, some among you people of the Church, lead me to
your prisons, that I may no longer be in the hands of the English.” To
which my Lord of Beauvais replied, “Lead her back whence she was
taken!” For this reason she was taken back to the Castle which she
had left. The following Sunday, which was Trinity Sunday, the
Masters, Notaries, and others concerned in this Trial were
summoned; and we were told that she had resumed her man’s dress
and had relapsed; and when we came to the Castle, in the absence of
my Lord of Beauvais, there came upon us eighty or a hundred
English soldiers, or thereabouts, who spoke to us in the courtyard of
the Castle, telling us that all of us Clergy were deceitful, traitorous
Armagnacs and false counsellors; so that we had great trouble to
escape and get out of the Castle, and did nothing for that day. The
following day I was summoned; but I replied that I would not go if I
had not a surety, on account of the fright I had had the day before;
and I would not have gone back if one of the followers of my Lord of
Warwick had not been sent as a surety. And thus I returned, and was
at the continuation of the Trial, up to the end—except that I was not
at a certain examination made by people who had spoken with her
privately,[110] as privileged persons; nevertheless, the Bishop of
Beauvais wanted to compel me to sign, and this I would not do.
I saw Jeanne led to the scaffold;[111] and there were seven or eight
hundred soldiers around her, bearing swords and staves; so that no
one was so bold as to speak to her except Brother Martin Ladvenu
and Maître Jean Massieu.
Patiently did she hear the sermon right through; afterwards she
repeated her thanksgiving, prayers, and lamentations most notably
and devoutly, in such manner that the Judges, Prelates, and all
present were provoked to much weeping, seeing her make these
pitiful regrets and sad complaints. Never did I weep more for
anything that happened to me; and, for a month afterwards, I could
not feel at peace. For which reason, with a part of the money I had
for my services I bought a little Missal, so that I might have it and
might pray for her. In regard to final repentance, I never saw greater
signs of a Christian.
I remember that at the sermon given at Saint Ouen by Maître
Guillaume Érard, among other words were said and uttered these:
“Ah! noble House of France, which hath always been the protectress
of the Faith, hast thou been so abused that thou dost adhere to a
heretic and schismatic? It is indeed a great misfortune.” To which the
Maid made answer, what I do not remember, except that she gave
great praise to her King, saying that he was the best and wisest
Christian in the world. At which Érard and my Lord of Beauvais
ordered Massieu, “Make her keep silence.”

Maître Jean Massieu, Priest, Curé of one of the Divisions of the

Parish Church of Saint-Caudres at Rouen, formerly Dean of the
Christendom of Rouen.
I was at the Trial of the said Jeanne on every occasion when she was
present before the Judges and Clerics; and, on account of my office, I
was appointed a Clerk to Maître Jean Benedicite,[112] Promoter in this
Action. I believe, from what I saw, that the proceedings were taken
out of hatred and in order to abase the honour of the King of France
whom she served, and to wreak vengeance and bring her to death,
not according to reason and for the honour of God and of the
Catholic Faith. I say this, because when my Lord of Beauvais, who
was Judge in the Case, accompanied by six Clerics—namely,
Beaupère, Midi, Maurice, Touraine, Courcelles, and Feuillet, or some
other in his place—first questioned her, before she had answered one
of them, another of those present would interpose another question,
by which she was often hurried and troubled in her answers. And,
besides, as I was leading Jeanne many times from her prison to the
Court, and passed before the Chapel of the Castle, at Jeanne’s
request, I suffered her to make her devotions in passing; and I was
often reproved by the said Benedicite, the Promoter, who said to me:
“Traitor! what makes thee so bold as to permit this Excommunicate
to approach without permission? I will have thee put in a tower
where thou shalt see neither sun nor moon for a month, if thou dost
so again.” And when the Promoter saw that I did not obey him, the
said Benedicite placed himself many times before the door of the
Chapel, between me and Jeanne, to prevent her saying her prayers
before the Chapel, and asked expressly of Jeanne: “Is this the Body of
Christ?” When I was taking her back to prison, the fourth or fifth
day, a priest named Maître Eustace Turquetil, asked me: “What dost
thou think of her answers? will she be burned? what will happen?”
and I replied: “Up to this time I have seen in her only good and
honour; but I do not know what will happen in the end, God knows!”
Which answer was reported by the said priest to the King’s people;
and it was said that I was opposed to the King. On this account, I was
summoned, in the afternoon, by the Lord of Beauvais, the Judge, and
was spoken to of these things and told to be careful to make no
mistake, or I should be made to drink more than was good for me. I
think that, unless the Notary Manchon had made excuses for me, I
should not have escaped.
When Jeanne was taken to Saint-Ouen to be preached to by Maître
Guillaume Érard, at about the middle of the sermon, after she had
been admonished by the words of the preacher, he began to cry out,
in a loud voice, saying, “Ah! France, thou art much abused, thou hast
always been the most Christian country; and Charles, who calls
himself thy King and Governor, hath joined himself, as a heretic and
schismatic, which he is, to the words and deeds of a worthless
woman, defamed and full of dishonour; and not only he, but all the
Clergy within his jurisdiction and lordship, by whom she hath been
examined and not reproved, as she hath said.” Two or three times he
repeated these words about the King; and, at last, addressing himself
to Jeanne he said, raising his finger: “It is to thee, Jeanne, that I
speak, I tell thee that thy King is a heretic and schismatic!” To which
she replied: “By my faith! sir, saving your reverence, I dare say and
swear, on pain of death, that he is the most noble of all Christians,
and the one who most loves the Faith of the Church, and he is not
what you say.” And then the preacher said to me: “Make her keep
silence.”
Jeanne never had any Counsel.[113] I remember that Loyseleur was
one appointed to counsel her. He was against her, rather deceiving
than helping her.
The said Érard, at the end of his sermon, read a schedule containing
the Articles which he was inciting Jeanne to abjure and revoke. To
which Jeanne replied, that she did not understand what abjuring
was, and that she asked advice about it. Then Érard told me to give
her counsel about it. After excusing myself for doing this, I told her it
meant that, if she opposed any of the said Articles, she would be
burned. I advised her to refer to the Church Universal as to whether
she should abjure the said Articles or not. And this she did, saying in
a loud voice to Érard: “I refer me to the Church Universal, as to
whether I shall abjure or not.” To this the said Érard replied: “You
shall abjure at once, or you shall be burned.” And, indeed, before she
left the Square, she abjured, and made a cross with a pen which I
handed to her.
At the end of the sermon, I advised Jeanne to ask that she might be
taken to the prisons of the Church: and it was right she should be
taken to the Church prisons, because the Church had condemned
her. And this thing was asked of the Bishop of Beauvais by some of
those present, whose names I do not know. To which the Bishop
replied: “Take her to the Castle whence she came.” And so it was
done. That day, after dinner, in the presence of the Counsel of the
Church, she took off her man’s dress and put on a woman’s dress, as
she was commanded. This was on the Thursday or Friday after
Pentecost; and the man’s dress was put in a bag in the same room
where she was kept prisoner, while she remained guarded in this
place, in the hands of five of the English, three of whom stayed all
night in the room, and two outside the door of the room. I know of a
surety that at night she slept chained by the legs with two pairs of
iron chains, and fastened closely to a chain going across the foot of
her bed, held to a great piece of wood, five or six feet long, and closed
with a key, so that she could not move from her place. When the
following Sunday came, being Trinity Sunday, and when it was time
to rise, as she reported and said to me, she asked the English guards:
“Take off my irons that I may get up.” Then one of the English took
away from her the woman’s garments which she had on her, and they
emptied the bag in which was her man’s dress, and threw the said
dress at her, saying to her: “Get up, and put the woman’s dress in the
bag.” And, in accordance with what he said, she dressed herself in
the man’s dress they had given her, saying: “Sirs, you know it is
forbidden me; without fail, I will not take it again.” Nevertheless,
they would not give her the other, insomuch that the contention
lasted till mid-day, and, finally, she was compelled to take the said
dress; afterwards, they would not give up the other, whatever
supplications or prayers she might make.
This she told me on the Tuesday following, before dinner, on which
day the Promoter had departed in company with the Earl of
Warwick, and I was alone with her. Immediately I asked her why she
had resumed a man’s dress, and she told me what I have just related.
I was not at the Castle on the Sunday, but I met near the Castle those
who had been summoned, much overwhelmed and affrighted. They
said they had been furiously driven back by the English with axes
and swords, and called traitors, and otherwise insulted. On the
following Wednesday, the day she was condemned, and before she
left the Castle, the Body of Christ was borne to her irreverently,
without stole and lights, at which Brother Martin, who had confessed
her, was ill-content, and so a stole and lights were sent for, and thus
Brother Martin administered It to her. And this done, she was led to
the Old Market-Place, and by her side were Brother Martin and
myself, accompanied by more than 800 soldiers, with axes and
swords. And being in the Old Market-Place, after the sermon, during
which she showed great patience and listened most quietly, she
evinced many evidences and clear proofs of her contrition, penitence,
and fervent faith, if only by her pitiful and devout lamentations and
invocations of the Blessed Trinity and the Blessed and Glorious
Virgin Mary, and all the Blessed Saints in Paradise—naming specially
certain of these Saints: in which devotions, lamentations, and true
confession of faith, she besought mercy also, most humbly, from all
manner of people of whatever condition or estate they might be, of
her own party as well as of the other, begging them to pray for her,
forgiving them the harm they had done her, [and thus] she
persevered and continued as long a space of time as half-an-hour,
and up to the very end.
When she was given over by the Church, I was still with her; and
with great devotion she asked to have a Cross: and, hearing this, an
Englishman, who was there present, made a little cross of wood with
the ends of a stick, which he gave her, and devoutly she received and
kissed it, making piteous lamentations and acknowledgments to
God, Our Redeemer, Who had suffered on the Cross for our
Redemption, of Whose Cross she had the sign and symbol; and she
put the said Cross in her bosom, between her person and her
clothing. And, besides, she asked me humbly that I would get for her
the Church Cross, so that she might see it continually until death.
And I got the Clerk of the Parish of Saint-Sauveur to bring it to her;
the which, being brought, she embraced closely and long, and kept it
till she was fastened to the stake. While she was making these
devotions and pious lamentations, I was much hurried by the
English and even by some of their Captains, who wished me to leave
her in their hands, that she might be put to death the sooner, saying
to me, when I was trying to console her on the scaffold: “What,
Priest! will you have us dine here?” And immediately, without any
form or proof of judgment, they sent her to the fire, saying to the
executioner: “Do thine office!” And thus she was led and fastened [to
the stake], continuing her praises and devout lamentations to God
and His Saints, and with her last word, in dying, she cried, with a
loud voice: “Jesus!”

Maître Jean Beaupère, Master in Theology, Canon of Rouen.

With regard to the apparitions mentioned in the Trial of the said
Jeanne, I held, and still hold, the opinion that they rose more from
natural causes and human intent than from anything supernatural;
but I would refer principally to the Process.
Before she was taken to Saint-Ouen, to be preached to in the
morning, I went alone, by permission, into Jeanne’s prison, and
warned her that she would soon be led to the scaffold to be preached
to, telling her that, if she were a good Christian, she would say on the
scaffold that she placed all her deeds and words in the ordering of
Our Holy Mother Church, and especially of the Ecclesiastical Judges.
And this did she say on the scaffold, being thereto requested by
Maître Nicolas Midi. This being noted and considered, she was for a
time sent back, after her abjuration; although some of the English
accused the Bishop of Beauvais and the Delegates from Paris of
favouring Jeanne’s errors.
After this abjuration, and after taking her woman’s dress which she
received in prison, it was reported to the Judges on the Friday or
Saturday following that Jeanne had repented of having put off a
man’s dress and had taken a woman’s dress. On this account, my
Lord of Beauvais sent me and Maître Nicolas Midi to her, hoping that
we should speak to Jeanne and induce and admonish her to
persevere in the good intent she had on the scaffold, and that she
should be careful not to relapse. But we could not find the keeper of
the prison key,[114] and, while we were waiting for the prison guard,
several of the English, who were in the courtyard of the Castle, spoke
threatening words, as Maître Nicolas Midi told me, to the effect that
he who would throw both of us into the water would be well
employed. And, hearing these words, we returned; and, on the bridge
of the Castle, Midi heard, as he reported to me, like words used by
others of the English; at which we were much frightened, and went
away without speaking to Jeanne.
As to her innocence, Jeanne was very subtle with the subtlety of a
woman, as I consider. I did not understand from any words of hers
that she had been violated.
As to her final penitence, I do not know what to say, for, on the
Monday after[115] the abjuration, I left Rouen to go to Basle,[116] on the
part of the University of Paris. Through this I knew nothing of her
condemnation until I heard it spoken of at Lisle in Flanders.
 [117]
THE SECOND ENQUIRY : 1452,
AND THIRD ENQUIRY: 1455–6.
[A Rescript was issued by Pope Calixtus III. ordering the Procedure
of Revision for the Enquiry of 1455–6.]

Examination of Witnesses.

Manchon: Second Examination, 2nd May, 1452. [Additional

statements:]
I have heard that after Jeanne was taken captive by one of the
company of the Count de Ligny, she was taken to the Castle of
Beaurevoir and detained there three months; and then, by letters
from the King of England to my Lord of Beauvais, she was taken to
Rouen and put in prison.
The Bishop of Beauvais held with the English; and, before he took
cognizance of the Case, Jeanne was put in irons: after he had
informed himself, Jeanne, thus fettered, was given over to the
custody of four English, although the Bishop and the Inquisitor had
stated and sworn that they would themselves faithfully keep her.
Jeanne was treated with cruelty, and, towards the end of the Trial,
was shown the torture.
 SAINT LUCIEN TOWER,
BEAUVAIS.

Jeanne is said to have

passed a night in this tower
on August 20, 1429.

And thus she put on man’s clothing and lamented that she did not
dare to doff these, fearing that at night the guards might attempt
some violence; and once or twice complaint was made to the Bishop
of Beauvais, to the Sub-Inquisitor, and to Maître Nicolas Loyseleur
that some of these guards had attempted to assault her. The Earl of
Warwick, at the statement of the Bishop, the Inquisitor, and
Loyseleur, uttered strong threats should they again presume to
attempt this; and two other guards were appointed.
I, as notary, wrote Jeanne’s answers and defence. Two or three
writers, who were secretly ensconced near, omitted, in their writing,
all that was in her favour.
The Judges desired me to write also in such wise, but I refused.

Third Examination, 8th May, 1452. [Additional statements:]

I acted as notary in the Process, by compulsion of the Great Council
of the King of England, not daring to contradict their order. The
Bishop of Beauvais was not compelled to take up the Process against
Jeanne. He did it of free-will. The Inquisitor was summoned and
dared not refuse. The Process was carried out by the English at their
expense. The Promoter also was not compelled, but came of free-will.
The Assessors and Doctors were summoned and dared not refuse.
[With regard to the comparison of the writing of the concealed clerks
and the notaries, he adds that] the comparison of notes was made in
the house of the Bishop.
Jeanne answered prudently and with simplicity, as might be seen in
the Process. She could not have defended herself before such great
Doctors had she not been inspired. The examination lasted for two or
three hours in the morning, and sometimes as long again in the
afternoon of the same day. She was much fatigued by the
examination, for the examiners put to her the most subtle questions
they possibly could.
The original Process was written by me faithfully, in French, after the
first session. Later, I believe it was faithfully translated into Latin.
During the Process, and almost up to the close, Jeanne had no
Counsel. I do not remember if she asked for one; but, towards the
end, she had Maître Pierre Maurice and a Carmelite to direct and
instruct her.
On the day of her death, before the sermon and ere she left the
Castle, she received the Body of the Lord by the order of the Judges,
at her own request.
She was taken to the place of execution by a large number of soldiers
—nearly four score. After the ecclesiastical sentence had been
pronounced, and Jeanne given up, she was taken over to the Bailly,
there present, who, without any consultation or sentence, made a
sign with his hand, saying: “Take her away! Take her away!”

Fourth Examination, 17th December, 1455. [Additional statements:]

The sum of a thousand pounds, or crowns, was given by the King of
England for the surrender of the Maid; and an annuity of 300
pounds to the soldier of the Duke of Burgundy who had captured her.
I was appointed notary in the Trial, together with a certain
Guillaume Boisguillaume.
The copy of the Process shewn to me is the true Copy made. I
acknowledge my own and my companion’s signatures, and that it is
the truth. Two other copies were made. One was given to the
Inquisitor, one to the King of England, and one to the Bishop of
Beauvais. This Process was made from a certain Minute written in
French, by my own hand, which was given up to the Judges, and was
afterwards translated from the French into Latin by Monsieur
Thomas de Courcelles and myself, in the form in which it now
stands, as well and as faithfully as possible, long after the death and
execution of Jeanne. As for the Act of Accusation and other parts of
the Process, Maître Thomas de Courcelles had very little to do with
these, nor did he greatly interfere with them.
With regard to the word Nota, written above certain Articles in the
Minute, there was, on the first day of the Enquiry, a great tumult in
the Chapel of the Castle at Rouen, where, that day, the interrogation
was held, so that Jeanne was interrupted at almost every word,
whilst she was speaking of her apparitions: Certain secretaries were
there—two or three—of the King of England, who registered, as they
chose, her words and depositions, omitting all her defence and all
which tended to exonerate her. I complained of this, saying it was
irregular, and that I would not be responsible, as clerk, in this
matter: and, therefore, on the morrow, the place of meeting was
changed and convened in a certain hall of the Castle, near the Great
Hall, while two English were placed to keep order. When there were
difficulties as to Jeanne’s answers, and some said she had not replied
as I had written, I wrote Nota at the top, in order that the questions
might be repeated and the difficulties removed. Although it is
mentioned in the Process that the Judges stated they had received
preliminary evidence, I do not remember to have seen or heard of it;
but I know that, if it had been produced, it would have been inserted
in the Process.
Jeanne was brought to Rouen and not to Paris, because, as I think,
the King of England and the principal people of his Council were
there.
At the beginning of the Process, I was sent for to attend a meeting
held at a certain house near the Castle, at which were present the
Bishop of Beauvais, the Abbé of Fécamp, Maître Nicolas Loyseleur,
and many others. The Bishop told me it was necessary that I should
serve the King: that they meant to bring a fine case against this said
Jeanne, and that I was to recommend another greffier to assist me. I
therefore nominated Boisguillaume.
I met Lohier in the Church, on the day after the Bishop had asked
him to give an opinion on the Process, and enquired what he thought
of it. He replied, that the Process was of no value, and could not be
maintained, because it was conducted in the Castle and not in a legal
court; that it concerned many who were not summoned; that Jeanne
had no Counsel: and for many other reasons. He added that, in his
opinion, it was their intention to put her to death.
A certain Maître Nicolas de Houppeville was summoned to attend
the Trial; and was in great danger, because he refused. Maître Jean
Lemaitre, Sub-Inquisitor, delayed as long as possible his attendance
at the Trial, and was much vexed at being compelled to attend.
One day, when Jeanne was being questioned, Jean de Châtillon
spoke in her favour, saying that she was not compelled to reply to the
question put to her, or to that effect. This much displeased the
Bishop of Beauvais and his following, and there was a great tumult at
his words. The Bishop ordered him to be quiet, and to let the Judges
speak.
On another occasion, when some one was advising and directing
Jeanne on the question of submission to the Church, the Bishop said,
“Hold your tongue, in the devil’s name!” I do not remember the
name of him who was thus spoken to.
One day, some one, whose name I do not remember, having spoken
of Jeanne in a way which did not please the Earl of Stafford, the
latter followed him, sword in hand, to some place of sanctuary; and,
if they had not told Stafford that that place was sacred, he would
have slain him.
Those who seemed to me most affected [against Jeanne] were
Beaupère, Midi, and de Touraine.
One day, I went with the Bishop of Beauvais and the Earl of Warwick
to the prison where Jeanne was, and we found her in irons. It was
said that at night she was fastened with iron chains; but I did not see
her so fastened. There was, in the prison, neither bed nor any kind of
couch. There were four or five guards of the lowest kind.
[Manchon supplies a fuller account of the story given in 1450 as to
the clerks having overheard Jeanne’s confession to Loyseleur:]
After I and Boisguillaume had been appointed notaries, the Earl of
Warwick, the Bishop of Beauvais, and Maître Nicolas Loyseleur told
us that Jeanne had spoken strange things in regard to her visions,
and in order the better to know the truth about them, it was agreed
that Maître Nicolas Loyseleur should pretend to be from the Marches
of Lorraine—Jeanne’s own country—and in the following of the King
of France; that he should enter her prison in a layman’s habit, and
that the guards should retire and leave him alone with her: there
was, in a room adjoining the prison, a hole, specially made for the
purpose, in order that I and my companion might be there, and hear
what was said by Jeanne. Thither we went, unseen by her. Then
Loyseleur, pretending to have news, began to question Jeanne of the
King’s estate and of her revelations. Jeanne replied, believing him to
be in fact of her own country and party: and the Bishop and the Earl
desired us to put in writing what we had heard. I replied, that this
ought not to be, that it was not honest to carry on the Trial by such
means, but that, if she spoke thus in open Court, we would willingly
register the words. And, ever afterwards, Jeanne had great
confidence in this Loyseleur, who often heard her in confession, and
would generally have private speech with her before she was taken
before the Judges.
The interrogations sometimes lasted three or four hours in the
morning; and sometimes difficult and subtle questions arose on the
answers, on which she was further examined after dinner for two or
three hours. Often they turned from one question to another,
changing about, but, notwithstanding this, she answered prudently,
and evinced a wonderful memory, saying often, “I have already
answered you on this,” and adding, “I refer to the clerks.”
Long before the [Seventy] Articles were included in the Process,
Jeanne had been many times examined, and had given many
answers; and from these questions and answers the Articles were
drawn up, with the advice of the Assessors. This was done by the
Promoter, in order that the material, which was diffuse, might be put
in order. Afterwards, she was examined on the whole; and it was
concluded by the counsellors—principally those who came from Paris
—that it would be well, and according to custom, to reduce these
Articles and answers to shorter Articles, bringing together the
principal points, in order to have the material in brief, for better and
more prompt discussion. On this, there were drawn up the Twelve
Articles; but I had no hand in them, nor do I know who composed or
extracted them.
[With regard to a Note, dated April 4th, 1431, written in French and
contained in the Process, concerning these Twelve Articles, the other
two Notaries—Guillaume Colles or Boisguillaume, and Nicolas
Taquel—were summoned and questioned, together with deponent.
They testified that:]
The Note is in the handwriting of Manchon, but as to who drew up
the Twelve Articles we do not know. It was said to be customary that
such Articles should be made and drawn up from the confessions of
one accused of Heresy, even as in a matter of Faith was usually done,
in Paris, by the Doctors and Masters in Theology. The corrections of
these Articles were, we believe, put down as appears in the copy
before us; but, whether these corrections were added or not to the
copy of the Articles sent to Paris and to those invited to submit an
opinion, we do not know. We believe not: for a note, in the
handwriting of Maître Guillaume d’Estivet, the Promoter, shews that
they were sent by him on the following day without correction.
[Manchon was then asked, if he believed the Articles to be truthfully
composed, and if there were not a great difference between them and
Jeanne’s answers. He replied that, what was in his Process was true.
The Articles were not his doing.]
I believe that deliberation was not made on the whole Process,
because it was not then in shape. It was brought into its present form
only after Jeanne’s death. Opinions were given on the Twelve
Articles. The Twelve Articles were not read to Jeanne. [Asked again,
if he had ever perceived a difference between these Articles and
Jeanne’s confessions, he said he did not remember. Those to whom
they were shown said, that it was the custom to draw up such
Articles; but that he had not given his attention to it, and that he
should not have dared to argue with such great men.]
During the Trial I was seated at the feet of the Judges with Guillaume
Colles and the clerk of Maître Guillaume Beaupère, who was also
writing; but there was a great difference in what we had written, and
from this arose much contention.
When the Process was complete, opinions were asked for, and from
these it was decided that Jeanne should be exhorted; she was left to
the counsel of Maître Nicolas Loyseleur, who said to her: “Jeanne,
believe me: if you will, you may be saved. Take the dress of your sex,
and do all that you are told; otherwise you are in peril of death. If you
do what I tell you, you will be saved, and will have much good and
not much ill, and you will be given up to the Church.” And then she
was taken to a scaffold or platform. Two sentences had been
prepared, one of abjuration, the other of condemnation: both were in
the hands of the Bishop, and, while he was reading the sentence of
condemnation, Maître Nicolas Loyseleur continued to press Jeanne
to do what he had advised, and to accept the woman’s dress. There
was a short interval, in which an Englishman addressed the Bishop
as a traitor, to which he answered that he lied. At this instant, Jeanne
declared herself ready to obey the Church; and then the abjuration
was read to her. I do not know if she repeated it, or if, after it was
read, she said that she agreed. But she certainly smiled. The
executioner was there, with the cart, waiting to take her to the
burning.
On Trinity Sunday, I and the other notaries were commanded by the
Bishop and Lord Warwick to come to the Castle, because it was said
that Jeanne had relapsed and had resumed her man’s dress.
When we reached the Court, the English, who were there to the
number of about fifty, assaulted us, calling us traitors, and saying
that we had mismanaged the Trial. We escaped their hands with
great difficulty and fear. I believe they were angry that, at the first
preaching and sentence, she had not been burnt.
What she had said in the abjuration she said she had not understood,
and that what she had done was from fear of the fire, seeing the
executioner ready with his cart.
[Asked, why they had administered the Sacrament to one declared
excommunicate and heretic, and if she had been absolved by the
forms of the Church, Manchon answered:] There had been much
discussion among the Judges and their Counsellors, whether they
should offer her the Holy Sacrament, and whether she should be
absolved at the place of execution; but I did not see any absolution
granted to her. I was so disturbed that for a month I remained
terrified.
She never revoked her revelations, but maintained them up to the
end.

Brother Pierre Migier, Prior of Longueville, in the diocese of

Rouen, S.T.P., First examination, May 2nd, 1452, [evidence of no
special value.]
Second Examination, May 9th, 1452. [Additional evidence:]
At the end of the first sermon at Saint-Ouen, when Jeanne was
admonished to recant and she hesitated, one of the English
ecclesiastics told the Bishop that he was favouring Jeanne, to which
the Bishop replied, “You lie! It is my duty, on account of my
profession, to seek the salvation of the soul and body of this Jeanne.”
I was accused before the Cardinal of England as a partisan of Jeanne,
but I excused myself to the Cardinal, being in fear of my life.
I think the notaries were truthful, and that they wrote with fidelity.
I do not know whether she asked for Counsel, but I think no one
would have dared to counsel or defend her, nor would they have been
permitted.
She was taken to execution, with great anger, by the English soldiers.
When she was given up to the secular authorities by the Church, she
began to weep and call upon “Jesus.” Then I went away, having so
great compassion that I could not witness her death.

Third Examination, December 16th, 1455. [Additional evidence:]

I heard that, during the Trial, there were certain men hidden behind
curtains, who, it was said, were writing down the words and
confessions of Jeanne; but I do not know if this is the fact. This I
heard from Maître Guillaume Manchon, one of the three Registrars
of the Case. I complained of it to the Judges, saying that it did not
seem to me to be a good way of acting. But whatever may be the truth
of these hidden clerks, I believe truly that the Registrars who signed
the Process were trustworthy, and that they faithfully reported what
was done in the Trial.
As to the act of recantation, I know it was performed by her; it was in
writing, and was about the length of a Pater Noster.
In an old book, in which are the sayings of Merlin the prophet, it is
written that a maiden should come from an Oak-wood in the country
of Lorraine.

Brother Ysambard de la Pierre: Second Examination, May 3rd,

1452. [He makes the following additions:]
The room in which Jeanne was confined was rather dark.
I was at the sermon of Maître Guillaume Érard, who took as his
theme, “A branch cannot bear fruit except it abide in the Vine,”
saying that in France there was no monster such as this Jeanne: she
was a witch, heretic, and schismatic; and that the King who favoured
her was of like sort for wishing to recover his kingdom by means of
such an heretical woman.
The Bishop of Beauvais held with the English. I believe it was he
who, at the beginning of the Process, ordered her to be kept in irons,
and deputed the English as her keepers, forbidding any to speak with
her unless by leave from him, or from the Promoter, Benedicite.
When I was holding the Cross before her, she begged me to descend,
as the fire was mounting.
When she spoke of the kingdom and the war, I thought she was
moved by the Holy Spirit; but when she spoke of herself she feigned
many things: nevertheless, I think she should not have been
condemned as a heretic. When the Bishop asked if she would submit
to the Church, she enquired, “What is the Church? So far as it is you,
I will not submit to your judgment, because you are my deadly
enemy.” She complained that the Bishop would not allow them to
write anything in her excuse, but only what was against her. When
she was asked whether she would submit to the judgment of the
Pope, she replied that, if they would take her to him, she would be
content.
She was adjudged relapsed because she had resumed her man’s
dress. After she had recanted, she resumed a woman’s dress, and
begged to be taken to the ecclesiastical prisons; but it was not
permitted. I heard from Jeanne, herself, that she had been assaulted
by a great lord; and for that reason she had resumed her man’s dress,
which had been perfidiously left near her. After her resumption of
this dress, I heard the Bishop, with some of the English, exulting,
and saying publicly to the Earl of Warwick and others: “She is caught
this time!”

Third Examination, May 9th, 1452.

Some of the Assessors, such as the Bishop of Beauvais, proceeded of
their own pleasure; some—to wit, the English Doctors—out of
malicious spite; some, Doctors of Paris, from desire of gain; some
were induced by fear, as the aforesaid Sub-Inquisitor and others
whom I do not remember.
The Process was instituted by the King of England, the Cardinal of
Winchester, the Earl of Warwick, and other English, who paid all the
expenses. I remember well that Jean, Bishop of Avranches, for
having refused to give his advice in the Process, was threatened by
the Promoter d’Estivet; and Maître Nicolas de Houppeville, who
would not attend the Trial nor give an opinion, was in danger of
exile. After the first sermon, at which Jeanne recanted, I, Jean
Delafontaine, and Maître Guillaume Vallée, of the Order of Saint
Dominic, went to the Castle by order of the Judges to counsel Jeanne
that she should persevere in her good purpose. Seeing this, the
infuriate English threw themselves upon us, with swords and sticks,
and violently drove us out of the Castle; on this occasion, Jean
Delafontaine escaped, and left the town and did not return; also I
suffered many reproaches from the Earl of Warwick, because I had
told Jeanne she should submit to the General Council. [On the day
that she said she would submit] Messire Guillaume Manchon, the
notary, asked whether he should write down the submission? The
Bishop replied, No, it was not necessary. Then Jeanne said to the
Bishop: “Ah! you will certainly write what is against me, and will
write nothing that is for me.” This submission was not registered,
and there ensued in the assembly a great murmur.
The examination of Jeanne sometimes lasted three hours in the
morning; and sometimes she was examined in the afternoon as well
as in the morning; I heard her often complain of over-much
questioning.
During the greater part of the Process, when she was asked to submit
to the Church, she understood by that term the assembly of Judges
and Assessors there present. It was then expounded to her by Maître
Pierre Maurice; and, after she knew, she always declared that she
wished to submit to the Pope and to be conducted to him.
She was brought in a cart to the cemetery of Saint-Ouen. After the
preaching [at the Old Market] there was a long waiting, and then the
King’s clerks conducted her to the stake, I and Brother Martin
Ladvenu accompanying her up to the end.
On this same occasion, the Bishop of Beauvais wept. A certain
Englishman, a soldier, who hated her greatly, had sworn to bring a
faggot for the stake. When he did so, and heard Jeanne calling on the
name of Jesus in her last moments, he was stupefied, and, as it were,
in an ecstasy at the spectacle: his companions took him and led him
away to a neighbouring tavern. After refreshment, he revived. In the
afternoon, the same Englishman confessed, in my presence, to a
Brother of the Order of Saint Dominic, that he had gravely erred, and
that he repented of what he had done against Jeanne. He held her to
be a good woman, for he had seen the spirit departing from her, as it
were a white dove, going away from France.
In the afternoon of the same day, the executioner came to the
Convent of the Dominicans, saying to them and to Brother Martin
Ladvenu, that he feared he was damned because he had burnt a
saint.

Maître Pierre Cusquel, Citizen of Rouen. First Examination,

before Cardinal d’Estouteville, May 3rd, 1452.
I saw Jeanne brought in by the English.
I did not see her taken to prison, but I saw her two or three times in a
chamber in the Castle of Rouen, near the back entrance.
At the time of the Trial, I was in the habit of entering the Castle,
thanks to Johnson, master of the masons. Twice I entered her prison
and saw her, with her legs shackled and fastened by a long chain to a
beam. In my master’s house was hung a great cage of iron, in which,
it was said, she was to be shut up; but I never saw her in this cage.
I heard that Jeanne was made prisoner in the diocese of Beauvais,
and on this account the Bishop undertook the Process against her.

Second Examination, May 9th, 1452. [He adds to his evidence:]

The room [where Jeanne was imprisoned] was situated under the
stairs, towards the fields.
Maître André Marguérie, or another, said he had enquired as to
Jeanne’s change of dress, and by some one—I know not whom—was
told that he was to hold his tongue, in the devil’s name.
I twice entered Jeanne’s prison and spoke with her, warning her to
speak prudently, and that there was question of her death. The iron
cage, which I saw, was intended to detain her in an upright position.
I was not present at the last preaching and condemnation and
execution of Jeanne, because my heart could not bear it, for pity of
her; but I heard that she received the Body of the Lord before her
condemnation.
Maître Jean Tressart, when he returned from the execution, groaning
and weeping sadly, lamented to me what he had seen at this place,
saying to me: “We are all lost; we have burnt a Saint”; adding, that he
believed her soul was in the hands of God because, when she was in
the midst of the flames, she constantly called on the name of the
Lord Jesus.

Third Examination, May 11th, 1456. [Additional evidence:]

I had heard of the visitation ordered by the Duchess of Bedford, but
did not know if it were true.
After her death, the English had her ashes collected and thrown into
the Seine, because they feared that some might believe she had
escaped.

Ladvenu: Second Examination, May 3rd, 1452. [He adds the

following to his earlier testimony:]
I often saw her in the Castle of Rouen, under the custody of the
English, ironed and in prison.
I heard Jeanne, by license of the Judges, in confession; I
administered to her the Body of Christ; she received it with great
devotion and tears which I cannot describe.
The resumption of her man’s dress was one of the causes of her
condemnation.

Third Examination, May 9th, 1452. [Additional evidence:]

I was present at the greater part of the Process, with Brother Jean
Lemaître, then Sub-Inquisitor. I saw Maître Nicolas de Houppeville
—he who would not assist in the Process—taken to prison. I know
well that Jeanne had no director, counsel, nor defender, up to the
end of the Process, and that no one would have dared to offer himself
as her Counsel, director, or defender, for fear of the English. I have
heard that those who went to the Castle to counsel and direct Jeanne,
by order of the Judges, were harshly repulsed and threatened.
Directly Jeanne was abandoned by the Church, she was seized by the
English soldiers, who were present in large numbers, without any
sentence from the secular authority, although the Bailly of Rouen
and the Counsels of the Secular Court were present. I know this
because I was with her, from the Castle to her last breath.
The executioner, in my presence, gave his testimony that she had
been unjustly put to death.
Maître Guillaume Érard, at the sermon which he pronounced at the
Cemetery of Saint-Ouen, exclaimed: “Oh, House of France! thou hast
never till now nourished a monster in thy bosom; but now thou art
disgraced by thy adhesion to this witch, this heretic! this
superstitious one!”

Fourth Examination, December 19th, 1455, and May 13th, 1456.

[Additional statements:]
I have heard it said that the Bishop, and others concerned in the
Process, wished to have letters of guarantee from the King of
England, and received them; and these are the letters now shewn,
signed with the sign manual of Maître Laurence Calot, whose
signature I know well. Maître Jean Lemaitre, Sub-Inquisitor, who
was concerned in the Trial and who often went with me, was
compelled to attend. Brother Ysambard de la Pierre, who was a
friend of the Inquisitor, desired on one occasion to direct Jeanne, but
was told to hold his tongue, and that, if he did not henceforward
abstain from such interference, he would be thrown into the Seine.
On the day of her death I was with her until her last breath. One
present said he wished his soul might be where he believed Jeanne’s
soul was. After the reading of the sentence, she came down from the
platform on which the preaching had been, and was led by the
executioner, without any sentence from the secular Judges, to the
place where the pile was prepared for her burning. The pile was on a
scaffold, and the executioner lighted it from below. When Jeanne
perceived the fire, she told me to descend and to hold up the Cross of
the Lord on high before her that she might see it.
When I was with her, and exhorting her on her salvation, the Bishop
of Beauvais and some of the Canons of Rouen came over to see her;
and, when Jeanne perceived the Bishop, she told him that he was the
cause of her death; that he had promised to place her in the hands of
the Church, and had relinquished her to her mortal enemies.
Up to the end of her life she maintained and asserted that her Voices
came from God, and that what she had done had been by God’s
command. She did not believe that her Voices had deceived her: [but
that] the revelations which she had received had come from God.
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