The Geometer Lobachevsky"When I was sent by the Soviet state to London to further my studies in calculus, knowing I would never become a great mathematician, I strayed instead into the foothills of anthropology " It is 1950, and Nikolai Lobachevsky, great grandson of his illustrious namesake, is surveying a bog in the Irish Midlands, where he studies the locals, the land, and their ways. One afternoon, soon after he arrives, he receives a telegram calling him back to