Abstract

This is an overview of the life and works of Pavel Florensky, an important and singular figure of the period rightly described as the Silver Age of Russian mathematics, with a substantial overlap with the Silver Age of Russian literature, poetry and philosophy. Florensky is certainly among the great philosophers-theologians of the twentieth century, with a very atypical trajectory of life. His work in philosophy is imbued with mathematical ideas. Talking about his life and works is also an opportunity to reflect upon the Russian mathematical school of the first third of the twentieth century, its philosophical foundations, and the conflicts it underwent. It is also an occasion for discussing poetry, literature, and art during the Russian Silver Age.