New about Paul Nekrasov: from the history of the development of statistics in Russia. Social problems in an environment of mathematical creativity

Pavel Nekrasov (1853‒1924) ‒ professor of Mathematics, rector of Moscow State University (1893‒1898), president of the Moscow Mathematical Society. From 1905 to 1908, he worked in St. Petersburg in the service of the Ministry of Education. From 1917 to 1924 ‒ Professor of the Department of Pure Mathematics of Moscow State University. Nekrasov was a bright representative of the Moscow philosophical and mathematical school, whose ideas were aimed at resolving the classic sociological antagonisms via arrhythmology and probability theory, as well as special social anthropology, in which a person was considered as a living spiritual unity, "an independent and amateur individual" (according to Bugaev). Under Soviet rule, this theory was condemned as an obscurantism, in connection with the so-called "Case of Industrial Party" (1930) and with a condemnation of the scientific statistic. A long controversy about the role of the law of large numbers between Nekrasov and A.A. Markov is well known. This lecture is to shed light on certain aspects of scientific, pedagogical and administrative activities of Nekrasov. We will specifically focus on the last third of his life. Major problems, which occupied Nekrasov that time, were designated in his article "Moscow philosophical mathematical school and its founders" (1904). In whole, this problems concern social domains, and brought to searching for mathematical solutions.