The Korsakov Twins

The Korsakov twins, Anastasia and Irina from Irkutsk in Russia, are two of the few mathematicians who have been permitted to view the Vavasor papers. Of all the pairs of twins who have been granted this privilege, it is generally held that the Korsakovs are the ones who came closest to an understanding of the Vavasors' work. However, getting them to explain it to anyone else has proved somewhat more problematic, as whenever they are questioned about this, they have a tendency to resort to a private language of their own, based on a regional variant of [1]. Attempts have been made to locate another pair of twins who understand this language in order to provide some kind of translation, but so far this has been unsuccessful and the Korsakovs remain something of an enigma.