Yakov Perelman

Who was Yakov Perelman?

Yakov Isidorovich Perelman was a Russian and Soviet science writer and author of many popular science books, including Physics Can Be Fun and Mathematics Can Be Fun.

Perelman was born in 1882 in the town of Białystok, Congress Poland. He obtained the diploma of forester from the Imperial Forestry Institute in Saint Petersburg, in 1909. After the success of "Physics for Entertainment", Perelman set out to produce other books, in which he showed himself to be an imaginative populariser of science. Especially popular were "Arithmetic for entertainment", "Mechanics for entertainment", "Geometry for Entertainment", "Astronomy for entertainment", "Lively Mathematics", " Physics Everywhere", and "Tricks and Amusements".

His famous books on physics and astronomy were translated into various languages by the erstwhile Soviet Union.

The great scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky always thought highly of the talent and creative genius of Perelman. He wrote of him in the preface of Interplanetary Journeys: "The author has long been known by his popular, witty and quite scientific works on physics, astronomy and mathematics, which are, moreover written in a marvelous language and are very readable."