Why were so many very good books written by authors with Russian surnames?
[Math] Curious about math and Soviet Union
math-historyreference-request
Related Solutions
I can vouch for the Stillwell's one : Mathematics and Its History, and here's why: unlike most math history books which are, well, focused on the history alone, Stillwell's focus on the math.
That is, it's not about the mathematicians, but about the mathematics. Each chapter deals with a math topic (be it pythagorean triples, analytic geometry, etc) and it even has exercises to help you get an idea on what the main involved ideas are.
each chapter has a supplement showcasing one or two biographies about the main mathematicians involved on the chapter's subject
But the real feature, again, it's that the book is structured focusing on the mathematics history, not the mathematicians history (hence its title)
There's also an oldie but goodie: 2 volume set Eves' Great Moments in Mathematics , part of the Dolciani Mathematical Expositions series vol1 : before 1650 vol2 : after 1650 here each chapter is devoted to help you know about a specific mathematical breakthrough and why it's important on the mathematics development
This one starts talking about the Ishango Bone, which is dated around 10 tousand years ago, given you want to go far back as possible
I've been in your situation and will address several points from your question.
You write that you've been studying Russian for a year and are proficient. What does that actually mean? For example, how well do you understand Russian verbs: aspect, verbs of motion, transitive vs. intransitive, conditional using бы? Reading a lot will definitely improve your understanding of these grammatical points over time, but I would not have considered myself proficient after just 1 year of study and you do, so I'm curious how you judge that you are proficient now. Can you have conversations with native speakers about random topics already?
The link you give from the Univ. of Bonn has all the accent marks stripped off the Russian words. The person who created that webpage explains at the top -- in Russian -- why that was done, but for English speakers it's a bad idea not to have the accent marks because you should learn how to correctly pronounce words. (There will still be important subtleties, e.g., конечно in math.) You should get the offline version of the Lohwater dictionary, which has the accent marks. Also look at Gould's Russian for the Mathematician.
You say that your understanding is enhanced by connecting different disciplines in meaningful ways. I don't understand what you really have in mind here. Do you expect to understand the snake lemma better by knowing Russian? Frankly I don't think you're going to improve your understanding of math in a meaningful way by learning Russian unless your goal is to read something in Russian that has not been translated into English, and what might that be? The textbooks you mentioned by author names are already translated into English and you're not going to have a series of amazing mathematical insights by reading the original book instead of the translation. (I'm talking about math, not literature.) [Edit: I would agree that you can improve your Russian by reading math which interests you in Russian, so in the direction math ==> Russian I see that one discipline can assist the other. Reading math in Russian improved my grasp of several grammatical concepts, which I then used in conversations about everyday non-math topics.]
You say that you want to be able to speak, write, and read math in Russian. You left out listening, which goes together with speaking. These are four very different skills. Reading is the easiest: start reading Russian books with an English translation nearby and that way you can pick up new terms -- paying attention to the grammar along the way. Dictionaries are not as helpful for writing (correctly) as they are for reading because to write (correctly) you need to generate the Russian yourself, and in particular you must know mathematical phrases instead of individual words. One resource for this is a book by Sosinskii, Как написать математическую статью по-английски. You can find it online at http://www.ega-math.narod.ru/Quant/ABS.htm, although there are some glitches in the text-to-html conversion, so I think a physical copy of the book is better. Buy it at the Independent Univ. of Moscow bookstore. :) At the end of the book Sosinskii lists many mathematical phrases in English followed by their translation into Russian. That was meant to help Russian readers (the intended target audience of the book) learn what standard math phrases in English mean, but you can use it in reverse to learn how to write English phrases in Russian. To speak math in Russian you have to overcome an additional hurdle: learn how to pronounce mathematical notation in Russian (Latin and Greek variables, integrals, infinite series, rational functions, etc.), and that is essentially impossible without having native speakers around to help.
You write that one of your goals is to speak with Russian colleagues without having to pester them about Russian terminology all the time. The most efficient method to avoid bugging them about their terminology is to speak to them in English. For the most part they don't need you to learn Russian in order to communicate, since most (not all, but most) of them are going to speak English already. They'll certainly all be able to read English.
Some parts of what I've written above are kind of harsh, but that's because I think you need a reality check: reading Russian math after you know the grammar is a pretty straightforward skill to pick up by reading a few math books or articles where you are already familiar with the subject matter (so you can focus on the grammar and words and not the depth of the math). However, you seem fixated on the idea of speaking math in Russian and I think learning that skill is a complete waste of time for a non-fluent speaker unless you are going to visit Russia for mathematical reasons soon. Any Russian mathematician you meet in the US -- you are a student now in Vermont -- will speak English and trying to talk about math with them in Russian is not necessarily going to work out the way you expect: I know one prominent Russian mathematician in the US who forgot how to speak about math in Russian because he had done it only in English for so many years. Even in Russia you can get by discussing math with most mathematicians in English (at least in Moscow and St. Petersburg). Until you have a good reason to be speaking math in Russian you're probably also not going to find much practical use in writing math in Russian either (e.g., preparing lecture notes). The only exception I can think of is if you find a Russian pen pal for a language exchange (you write in Russian, the pen pal writes in English, and you correct each other) and the pen pal is interested in discussing math. That would give you a good reason to write math in Russian.
On a personal note, which explains where I am coming from in my assessments above, I could read math in Russian and have non-math conversations in Russian for about 20 years without having much of an idea about how to speak math in Russian (esp. pronouncing the notation) until I taught a math course in Russia last year to undergraduates, some of whom were not comfortable hearing English (but all of them could read English). While there I had a pretty strong incentive to learn how to talk about math in Russian because I had to do that on a regular basis with students. All the professors I met there spoke English.
Best Answer
I am not a historian as well, but I know a bit of Russian math from the inside. I liked the article @JM cited very much. As you may already learn from comments by Henry and answer by Gerry, Mathematics in Russia has been started seriously in XVIII cent. and is known mostly thanks to Euler how came to St. Petersburg, the capital of Russia that time.
There are more well-known names from XIX century like Chebyshev, Markov, Lyapunov, Lobachevsky and S. Kovalevskaya but I would say that the most fruitful period is XX century. I cannot say that I know all the reasons, but maybe some of them:
Backgorund - good mathematics in school: in Soviet Union school education was starting for kids of 6-7 years and was lasting for 10 years. After that people could enter university to pursue the Specialist degree (5 years, middle between BSc and MSc). For the last 3 years at school they learnt trigonometry, basic calculus in $\mathbb C$, integrals and derivatives, solid geometry/stereometry (when I was studying, calculus in $\mathbb C$ was not given).
Motivation and support - during the WW II and the Cold War, mathematicians were necessary to reach the desired results. There are some Russian surnames known especially in the control society like L. Pontryagin and N. Krylov. Due to the same reason, Russian physics were also strong that time.
Other areas of applied sciences and applied maths were not popular and also had strong influence from the side of authorities. That can be said about biology and, of course, economy. That may be one of the reasons there are not known names e.g. in Game Theory.
Here you can also think about the facilities which were available for Soviet scientists. That time you can either did fundamental research in pure maths or physics or control which were supported. Even Computer Sciences, I would say, were badly developed due to the lack of facilities. There were a lot of people going to West especially in 80s-90s to do Computer Science because it can be done there.
Strong traditions in scientific society about the education. A. Kolmogorov is known to be one of the greatest Russian mathematicians but he also participated a lot in the school program for mathematics. Also among his students there are V. Arnold, A. Shiryaev and E. Dynkin. Especially Arnold was known to be a perfect at his lectures (I managed to attend some of them 5 years ago and they were very impressive)
It was very important for the mathematician in Russia to be able to know how to teach - and in my opinion it relates quite much with how do you write the book.
Note also that a lot of such reasons are true for the Western mathematicians as well - just Russian surnames are more 'exotic' so that's why you more often notice that the book is written by authors with such surnames.