Nicolai Vasiliev

Nicolai Alexandrovich Vasiliev, also Vasil'ev, Vassilieff, Wassilieff (December 31, 1940), was a Russian logician, philosopher, psychologist, poet. He was a forerunner of paraconsistent and multi-valued logics. Early years Vasiliev was born on June 29 O.S., 1880 in Kazan, Russia. His father, Professor Alexander V. Vasiliev, was a fairly well known mathematician, his grandfather was the outstanding sinologist Professor Vassily P. Vasiliev, and his great grandfather was the prominent astronomer Ivan M. Simonov, who was a close colleague of Nikolai Lobachevsky. Wanting to be a psychologist, Vasiliev studied at the medical faculty and the historico-philological faculty of Kazan University (1906), where he was offered the position of privat-dozent in 1910. As a university student, Vasiliev was enthusiastic about symbolist style poetry and published some books of verses of his own (for example,"The longing for eternity") and translations of the poetry of Emile Verhaeren and Algernon Charles Swinburne.