To be fair, "just" reading Russian isn't that hard. A grammar textbook and a dictionary gets me through polyphonic greek lit and modern german lit. Try it! You might be surprised at how easy your brain will pick it up.
I think this is actually pretty common for graduate students of mathematics.
students are required to demonstrate the ability to read mathematics in French, German, or Russian by passing a two-hour, written language examination.
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If I'm not mistaken Dyson also learned Russian one summer as a kid, because he wanted to be able to read certain book. What a guy.
To be fair, "just" reading Russian isn't that hard. A grammar textbook and a dictionary gets me through polyphonic greek lit and modern german lit. Try it! You might be surprised at how easy your brain will pick it up.
I think this is actually pretty common for graduate students of mathematics.
http://www.math.harvard.edu/graduate/