Fomenko is the son of Timothy Grigorievich Fomenko (Russian: Тимофей Григорьевич Фоме́нко), an industrial engineer, and Valentina Polikarpovna (née Markova) (Russian: Валентина Поликарповна Маркова), a
philologist and teacher of Russian language and literature. His parents would later co-author his works on history in 1983 and 1996. Born in
Donetsk, then called Stalino, he was raised and schooled in
Magadan. In 1959, his family returned to Eastern
Ukraine and settled in the city of
Luhansk, where Fomenko attended Secondary School No. 26. During secondary school, Fomenko participated in many competitions relating to mathematics and won several medals as a result. Also in 1959, the magazine "Pionyerskaya pravda" (Russian: Пионерская правда, Pioneer Truth) published his first known science fiction story, "The Mystery of the
Milky Way".
Fomenko graduated from the Mechanics and Mathematics Faculty of
Moscow State University in 1967, and in 1969 began working in the department of
differential geometry in said faculty. In 1970 he defended his thesis "Classification of totally
geodesic manifolds realizing nontrivial cycles in Riemannian homogeneous spaces", and in 1972 defended his doctoral thesis, "The decision of the multidimensional Plateau problems on
Riemannian manifolds." In December 1981 he became a professor of the department of higher geometry and
topology, and in 1992 became the head of the department of differential geometry.
Fomenko has served as the editor of several Russian-language mathematics journals and is a member of many councils overseeing dissertations in his field. In 1996, he won the
State Prize of the Russian Federation for excellence in mathematics.
Mathematical work
Fomenko is a full member (Academician) of the
Russian Academy of Sciences (1994), the International Higher Education Academy of Sciences (1993) and Russian Academy of Technological Sciences (2009), as well as a doctor of physics and mathematics (1972), a professor (1980), and head of the Differential Geometry and Applications Department of the Faculty of Mathematics and Mechanics in
Moscow State University (1992). Fomenko is the author of the theory of topological invariants of an integrable
Hamiltonian system. He is the author of 180 scientific publications, 26 monographs and textbooks on mathematics, a specialist in geometry and topology,
variational calculus,
symplectic topology,
Hamiltonian geometry and mechanics, and
computational geometry. Fomenko is also the author of a number of books on the development of new empirico-statistical methods and their application to the analysis of historical chronicles as well as the chronology of antiquity and the Middle Ages.
Fomenko is the author of extensive writings in his original fields of mathematics, and is also known for his original drawings inspired by
topological objects and structures.
Historical revisionism
Fomenko is one of the authors of a concept that manipulates historical chronology. It is known as
New Chronology. Fomenko claims that he has discovered that many historical events do not correspond mathematically with the dates on which they are supposed to have occurred. He asserts from this that all of ancient history (including the history of
Greece,
Rome, and
Egypt) is just a reflection of events that occurred in the
Middle Ages and that all of Chinese and Arab history are fabrications of 17th- and 18th-century
Jesuits.
He also claims that
Jesus lived in the 12th century A.D. and was crucified on
Joshua's Hill; that the
Trojan War and the
Crusades were the same historical event; and that
Genghis Khan and the
Mongols were actually Russians, that the lands west of the
Thirteen Colonies that now constitute the
American West and
Middle West were a far eastern part of "Siberian-American Empire" prior to its disintegration in 1775, and many other claims that contradict conventional
historiography. As well as disputing
written chronologies, Fomenko also disputes scientific dating techniques such as
dendrochronology and
radiocarbon dating(see
Radiocarbon dating § Carbon exchange reservoir for an examination of the latter criticism). His books include Empirico-statistical Analysis of Narrative Material and Its Applications, and History: Fiction or Science?.
Most Russian scientists and worldwide historians consider Fomenko's historical works to be either
pseudoscientific or antiscientific.[2][3][4]
Artwork
Fomenko is a painter and illustrator whose work often depicts objects from mathematics, many related to
topology.[5]
Fomenko A.T. «Some new empirico–statistical methods of dating and the analysis of present global chronology»,— London: The British Library, Department of printed books. Cup. 918/87, 1981.
A.T. Fomenko, V. V Kalashnikov.,
G. V. NosovskyGeometrical and Statistical Methods of Analysis of Star Configurations. Dating Ptolemy's Almagest. – CRC-Press, USA, 1993.
A.T. Fomenko New Methods of Statistical Analysis of Historical Texts. Applications to Chronology. Antiquity in the Middle Ages. Greek and Bible History. Vols.1, 2, 3. –
Lewiston, New York:
Edwin Mellen Press, 1999.
Fomenko A.T. «Antiquity in the Middle Ages. Greek and Bible History»,
Lewiston, New York:
Edwin Mellen Press, (Scholarly Monographs in the Russian Language), 1999.