Preface
1. G. A. Mesyats, “P. N. Lebedev Physical Institute RAS: past, present, and future.” Physics—Uspekhi 2009, 52, 1084–1097; actual quote, p. 1091.
2. Svetlana Ozkan, ed., Novodevichy Necropolis in Moscow (Moscow: Ritual, 2007). The Novodevichy Cemetery was opened in 1898, and soon it was surrounded by a brick wall. In 1932, it became a burial place of the Soviet elite, but it also includes many of the greats of pre-Soviet times.
3. At the top of his power, Khrushchev publicly criticized and humiliated Neizvestny for his modern art. After Khrushchev’s death, his family asked Neizvestny to create a tombstone for Khrushchev’s grave. Today, Ernst Neizvestny lives in New York City.
4. Istvan Hargittai, “Limits of Perfection,” in Symmetry: Unifying Human Understanding, ed. I. Hargittai (Oxford, UK: Pergamon Press, 1986), pp. 1–17.
Introduction
1. Andrei Sakharov, Memoirs, trans. Richard Lourie (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), pp. 123–124.
2. The fact that there was a token Jewish student from time to time in such institutions did not change the situation.
Chapter 1
1. I. I. Tamm [I. E. Tamm’s daughter], “Family Chronicle,” in Kapitsa Tamm Semenov: v ocherkakh i pis’makh, general ed., A. F. Andreev (Moskva: Vagrius Priroda, 1998), pp. 359–382; actual reference, p. 253.
2. I. E. Tamm, letter to Natalia Vasilevna, May 22, 1917; Andreev, Kapitza Tamm Semenov, p. 257.
3. Graham Farmelo, The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius (London: Faber and Faber, 2009), pp. 149–150.
4. I. I. Tamm in Andreev, Kapitza Tamm Semenov, pp. 364–365
5. Ibid., pp. 367–368.
6. Ibid., pp. 359–382.
7. Andreev, Kapitsa Tamm Semenov, p. 309.
8. E. Y. Hartshorne, The German Universities and National Socialism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1937), p. 112.
9. Andrei Sakharov, Moscow and Beyond 1986–1989 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), p. 64.
10. Istvan Hargittai, Judging Edward Teller: A Closer Look at One of the Most Influential Scientists of the Twentieth Century (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2010), p. 355.
11. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1958/tamm-speech.html.
12. Andreev, Kapitza Tamm Semenov, p. 314.
13. Ibid., p. 397.
14. Ibid., p. 298.
15. Ibid., p. 335.
16. Ibid., p. 338.
17. Ibid., p. 341.
18. Ibid., pp. 342–343.
19. Ibid., pp. 343–345.
20. Istvan Hargittai, “A Curious Case of Soviet Nobel Aspirations,” Chemical Intelligencer 1999, 5 (3), 61–64; actual quote, p. 61. The Russian original of the quote was in A. Blokh, Poisk, nos. 31–32, July 25–August 7, 1998, p. 12. See also A. M. Blokh, Sovetskii Soyuz v interyere nobelevskikh premii: Fakti. Dokumenti. Razmyshleniya. Kommentarii [The Soviet Union in the interior of the Nobel Prizes: facts; documents; reflections; commentaries], 2nd ed. (Moscow: Fizmatlit, 2005).
21. Hargittai, “A Curious Case.”
22. Blokh, Sovetskii Soyuz, p. 486.
23. Ibid., p. 819.
24. Private communication from Sheldon Glashow via e-mail, June 2012.
25. As for Glashow, he was at the CERN at the time of his waiting for his Soviet visa. His colleagues observed him reading whatever he could find about the Soviet Union in the CERN Library. Private communication by Richard Garwin, via e-mail, June 13, 2012.
26. I am grateful to Anders Bárány for having conducted this research in March 2012.
27. The four leading scientists involved in the antiproton discovery were Owen Chamberlain, Emilio Segrè, Clyde Wiegand, and Thomas Ypsilantis. In 1959, two of the four, Chamberlain and Segrè, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the antiproton.
28. Andreev, Kapitza Tamm Semenov, p. 384 [by Leonid Vernskii, Tamm’s grandson].
29. Ibid., p. 394.
30. Blokh, Sovetskii Soyuz, pp. 488–489.
31. Ibid., p. 490.
32. George Paloczi-Horvath, The Facts Rebel: The Future of Russia and the West (London: Secker & Warburg, 1964), pp. 82–83.
33. Andreev, Kapitza Tamm Semenov, p. 346 [after Moskovskaya Pravda No. 137, June 19, 1994].
34. Ibid., pp. 350–358.
35. Ibid., p. 356.
36. Andreev, Kapitza Tamm Semenov, p. 384 [by Leonid Vernskii].
37. Ibid., p. 385.
38. Ibid., p. 386
39. Ibid., p. 388.
Chapter 2
1. Perhaps the best source for learning more about Ya. B. Zeldovich’s life and oeuvre is Rashid A. Sunyaev, ed., Zeldovich: Reminiscences (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2005).
2. R. A. Sunyaev, “When We Were Young,” in Sunyaev, Zeldovich: Reminiscences, pp. 233–240.
3. Istvan Hargittai, “Walter Gilbert,” in Candid Science II: Conversations with Famous Biomedical Scientists, ed. Magdolna Hargittai (London: Imperial College Press, 2002), pp. 98–113.
4. M. Ya. Ovchinnikova, “Enchanted with the World,” in Sunyaev, Zeldovich: Reminiscences, pp. 61–68; actual quote, p. 61.
5. http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1235922.ece (as of April 10, 2013).
6. “From the Eulogy of A. D. Sakharov,” in Sunyaev, Zeldovich: Reminiscences, pp. 97–98; actual quote, p. 98.
7. Ya. B. Zeldovich, “Autobiographical Afterword,” in Sunyaev, Zeldovich: Reminiscences, pp. 338–348; actual quote, p. 342.
8. Boris S. Gorobets, Krug Landau i Lifshitsa [Landau’s and Lifshits’s circle] (Moscow: URSS, 2008), p. 99.
9. Ibid., p. 100.
10. See, Boris S. Gorobets, Sekretnie fiziki iz atomnogo proekta SSSR: Semya Leipunskikh [Classified physicists from the atomic project of the Soviet Union: The Leipunskii family], 2nd ed. (Moscow: URSS, 2009), pp. 151–157.
11. Yu. B. Khariton, in Znakomii neznakomii Zeldovich (Moscow 1993), p. 107
12. N. A. Konstantinova, “‘Don’t forget to write about me,’” in Zeldovich: Reminiscences, pp. 26–28; actual quote, p. 27.
13. Ovchinnikova, “Enchanted with the World,” p. 62.
14. Ibid., p. 63.
15. Ibid.
16. Olga Zeldovich, Marina Ovchinnikova, and Boris Zeldovich, private communication of February 20, 2012, by e-mail.
17. Boris Gorobets, private communication of February 25, 2012, by e-mail.
18. Ovchinnikova, “Enchanted with the World,” p. 63.
19. Olga Zeldovich, Marina Ovchinnikova, and Boris Zeldovich, private communication of February 20, 2012, by e-mail.
20. Ibid.
21. Yu. N. Smirnov, “A Knight of Science,” in Sunyaev, Zeldovich: Reminiscences, pp. 105–120; actual quote, p. 119.
22. Ibid., p. 116.
23. Kip S. Thorne, “Zeldovich Predicts That Black Holes Radiate,” in Sunyaev, Zeldovich: Reminiscences, pp. 323–329; actual reference, p. 323.
24. V. Ya. Frenkel, “I Can See Him in Front of Me, as if Still Alive,” in Sunyaev, Zeldovich: Reminiscences, pp. 14–25; actual quote, p. 19.
25. V. S. Pinaev, “‘For Me, They Were the Happy Years,’” in Sunyaev, Zeldovich: Reminiscences, pp. 131–138; actual quote, p. 138.
26. V. E. Zakharov, “My Reminiscences about Ya. B. Zeldovich,” in Sunyaev, Zeldovich: Reminiscences, pp. 203–207; actual reference, p. 204.
27. Gorobets, Krug Landau i Lifshitsa, p. 108.
28. V. I. Goldanskii, “Forty-Five Years,” in Sunyaev, Zeldovich: Reminiscences, pp. 30–45; actual reference, p. 40.
29. Ovchinnikova, “Enchanted with the World.”
30. Shimon Redlich, War, Holocaust and Stalinism: A Documented History of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the USSR (Luxembourg: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995), p. 131.
31. Gorobets, Krug Landau i Lifshitsa, p. 108.
32. Richard Lourie, Sakharov: A Biography (Hanover, NH, and London: Brandeis University Press, 2002), p. 131.
33. Andrei Sakharov, Memoirs, trans. Richard Lourie (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), p. 112.
34. “Letter from Ya. B. Zeldovich to M. M. Agrest,” June 14, 1981, in Sunyaev, Zeldovich: Reminiscences, pp. 69–70.
35. “Letter from M. M. Agrest to the Editors of the Journal Khimiya i Zhizn [Chemistry and Life],” February 13, 1992, in Sunyaev, Zeldovich: Reminiscences, p. 71.
36. A. D. Myshkis, “The ‘Humanizing’ of Mathematics,” in Sunyaev, Zeldovich: Reminiscences, pp. 208–219; actual quote, p. 218.
37. V. E. Zakharov, “My Reminiscences about Ya. B. Zeldovoch,” p. 206.
38. Andrei D. Sakharov, “A Man of Universal Interests,” in Sunyaev, Zeldovich: Reminiscences, pp. 125–128; actual reference, p. 128.
39. Ibid.
40. L. V. Altshuler, “The Beginning of the Physics of Extreme States,” in Sunyaev, Zeldovich: Reminiscences, pp. 99–104; actual quote, p. 99.
41. “From the Eulogy of A. D. Sakharov,” in Sunyaev, Zeldovich: Reminiscences, pp. 97–98; actual quote, p. 97.
42. Smirnov, “A Knight of Science,” in Sunyaev, Zeldovich: Reminiscences, pp. 105–120.
43. See, e.g., Yakov B. Zeldovich, My Universe: Selected Reviews (Routledge, 1992), p. 3.
44. Arno Penzias, “The Origin of the Elements,” in Nobel Lectures: Physics 1971–1980 (Singapore: World Scientific, 1992), pp. 444–457; actual quote, p. 454, referring to Doroshkevich and Novikov.
45. A. G. Doroshkevich and I. D. Novikov, “Mean Density of Radiation in the Metagalaxy and Certain Problems in Relativistic Cosmology,” Soviet Physics-Dokl. 1964, 9, 111; Russian original, Doklady Akademii Nauk SSSR 1964, 154, 809.
46. Penzias, Nobel Lectures, p. 455.
47. R. A. Sunyaev, “When We Were Young,” in Sunyaev, Zeldovich: Reminiscences, pp. 233–243; actual quote, p. 237.
48. Thorne, “Zeldovich Predicts That Black Holes Radiate,” in Sunyaev, Zeldovich: Reminiscences, p. 329.
49. P. J. E., “Zeldovich and Modern Cosmology,” in Sunyaev, Zeldovich: Reminiscences, pp. 281–293; actual quote, p. 281.
50. Sakharov, Memoirs, p. 259.
51. Smirnov, “A Knight of Science,” in Sunyaev, Zeldovich: Reminiscences, p. 105.
52. Ibid., p. 107.
53. I. D. Novikov, “The Beginning of Work in Astrophysics,” Sunyaev, in Zeldovich: Reminiscences, pp. 224–228; actual reference, p. 227.
54. Smirnov, “A Knight of Science,” in Sunyaev, Zeldovich: Reminiscences, p. 113.
55. On the comparison of Fermi and Szilard, see, I. Hargittai, The Martians of Science (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006; 2007), pp. 188–195.
56. Gorobets, Krug Landau i Lifshitsa.
57. I appreciate Roald Hoffmann’s kindness in translating the poem, January 2012.
1. In collecting biographical information, I relied on a variety of sources, especially on Andrei Sakharov, Memoirs, trans. Richard Lourie (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990).
2. Ibid., p. 4.
3. Ibid., p. 74.
4. Ibid., p. 47.
5. Ibid., p. 74.
6. Ibid., p. 95.
7. Ibid., p. 117.
8. Ibid., pp. 139–147.
9. Tokamak, toroidal chamber with magnetic coils (in Russian, toroidalnaya kamera s aksialnym magnitnym polem).
10. Sakharov, Memoirs, pp. 149–155.
11. Ibid., p. 94.
12. Ibid., p. 97.
13. Istvan Hargittai, The Martians of Science: Five Physicists Who Changed the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006; 2007), p. 165.
14. Ibid., p. 166.
15. Sakharov, Memoirs, p. 100.
16. Istvan Hargittai, Judging Edward Teller: A Closer Look at One of the Most Influential Scientists of the Twentieth Century (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2010).
17. David Holloway, “New Light on Early Soviet Bomb Secrets,” Physics Today 1996, November, 26–27.
18. Hargittai, Judging Edward Teller, p. 221, and subsequent mentions.
19. Ibid., p. 239.
20. German A. Goncharov, “Thermonuclear Milestones,” Physics Today 1996 November, 44; (1) “The American Effort,” ibid., 45–48; (2) “Beginnings of the Soviet H-Bomb program,” ibid., 50–54; (3) “The Race Accelerates,” ibid., 56–61.
21. Sakharov, Memoirs, p. 124.
22. Ibid., p. 133.
23. Ibid., p. 146.
24. Ibid., p. 164.
25. Ibid., p. 171.
26. Ibid., p. 184.
27. Ibid., p. 193.
28. Ibid., p. 194.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid., p. 217.
31. Andrei Sakharov, Moscow and Beyond 1986–1989 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), p. 24.
32. Sakharov, Memoirs, p. 160.
33. Ibid.
34. Hargittai, Judging Edward Teller, pp. 319–337. Teller’s comments accepting the harmful consequences of testing quoted here demonstrate one of his two alternate approaches to this issue. The other was belittling any possible danger from testing. Apparently it did not matter to him that his two alternate approaches were in direct contradiction.
35. Edward Teller with Allen Brown, The Legacy of Hiroshima (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962), pp. 180–181. Daughters of the American Revolution is a genealogical society; any women eighteen years or older may become a member if she can prove lineal descent from a patriot of the American Revolution, in which toward the end of the eighteenth century, thirteen colonies of North America decided to break free from the British Empire.
36. Sakharov, Memoirs, p. 201.
37. Ibid., p. 221.
38. Ibid.
39. E-mail exchange with Alexander Vernyi, February–March 2012.
40. Gennady Gorelik with Antonina W. Bouis, The World of Andrei Sakharov: A Russian Physicist’s Path to Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 226.
41. Sakharov, Moscow and Beyond, p. 42.
42. Sakharov, Memoirs, pp. 267–268.
43. Ibid., p. 282
44. Ibid., p. 289.
45. Ibid., p. 386.
46. Vitaly L. Ginzburg, O fizike i astrofizike [About physics and astrophysics]. 3rd rev. ed. (Moscow: Byuro Quantum, 1995), pp. 467–468.
47. Boris Ya. Zeldovich, private communication in February 2012, by e-mail.
48. Richard Lourie, Sakharov: A Biography (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2002), p. 219.
49. Sidney D. Drell, “Andrei Sakharov and the Nuclear Danger,” Physics Today 2000, May, 37–41.
50. http://www.aps.org/units/fps/awards/ (as of March 31, 2012).
51. Sakharov, Memoirs, p. 663.
52. Elena Bonner, Alone Together (New York: Vintage Books, 1988), pp. 271–280.
53. Ginzburg, O fizike, pp. 469–476.
54. Ibid., p. 469.
55. Ibid., p. 476.
56. Even as late as November 1988, almost one year after Sakharov’s return from exile to Moscow and three and a half years after Gorbachev’s having become the supreme leader of the Soviet Union, Sakharov still had to demand freedom for political priosoners, long after Gorachev had announced that there were no longer any. C. M., “Sakharov Visits US to Launch International Group,” Nature 1988, 336, (November 17), 191.
57. Sakharov, Moscow and Beyond, pp. 24–25.
58. Magdolna Hargittai and Istvan Hargittai, Candid Science IV: Conversations with Famous Physicists (London: Imperial College Press, 2004), pp. 272–285
59. Arno A. Penzias, “Sakharov and SDI,” in Andrei Sakharov: Facets of a Life, edited by B. L. Altshuler (Gif-sur-Yvette, France: Edition Frontiers, 1991), pp. 507–516.
60. Ibid., p. 507.
61. “Ostensibly,” because the principal tool of SDI was to be the X-ray laser whose application necessitated triggering an explosion of a nuclear device, even though the purpose of SDI, was to make nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete” (in President Reagan’s words).
62. Penzias, “Sakharov and SDI,” pp. 511–515.
63. Hargittai, Candid Science IV, p. 279.
64. Edward Kline, “Foreword” to Sakharov, Moscow and Beyond, pp. vii–xvii; actual quote, pp. viii–ix.
65. Ibid., p. xvi.
66. Ibid., p. xii.
67. Hargittai, Martians of Science, p. 74
68. Daniel E. Koshland Jr., “Andrei Sakharov, 1921–1989,” Science 1990, 247, 265.
Chapter 4
1. Magdolna Hargittai and Istvan Hargittai, Candid Science IV: Conversations with Famous Physicists (London: Imperial College Press, 2004), “David Shoenberg,” pp. 688–697. I have also learned a lot about Kapitza from the following sources: A. F. Andreev, general editor, Kapitza Tamm Semenov: v ocherkakh i pismakh [Kapitza Tamm Semenov: In sketches and letters] (Moscow: Vagrius Priroda, 1998), “Petr Leonidovich Kapitza,” pp. 13–218; J. W. Boag, P. E. Rubinin, and D. Shoenberg, compilers and editors, Kapitza in Cambridge and Moscow: Life and Letters of a Russian Physicist (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1990); Lawrence Badash, Kapitza, Rutherford, and the Kremlin (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985).
2. C. P. Snow, Variety of Men (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1966), p. 17.
3. Boag, Rubinin, and Shoenberg, Kapitza, pp. 40–45.
4. Ibid.
5. Trotsky was murdered by the Soviet secret police while he lived in exile, but this was admitted only in 1989, under Mikhail S. Gorbachev; Kamenev was rehabilitated in 1988, during Gorbachev’s reign.
6. Boag, Rubinin, and Shoenberg, Kapitza, p. 691.
7. Ibid., p. 29.
8. Ibid., p. 11.
9. I. M. Khalatnikov, Dau, Kentavr i drugie (Top nonsecret) [Dau, Centaur and others (top nonsecret)] (Moscow: Fizmatlit, 2008), pp. 40–41. The expression in English, “top nonsecret,” is part of the Russian title.
10. Boag, Rubinin, and Shoenberg, Kapitza, p. 31.
11. Hargittai and Hargittai, Candid Science IV.
12. Ibid., p. 692.
13. Ibid., p. 693.
14. George Gamow, My World Line: An Informal Autobiography (New York: Viking Press, 1970), p. 131.
15. Letter of P. L. Kapitza to L. B. Kamenev, February 2, 1929, in Boag, Rubinin, and Shoenberg, Kapitza, pp. 313–314.
16. B. S. Gorobets, Istoriya nauki i tekhniki 2010, no. 3, 19–32.
17. Ibid., p. 20.
18. Letter of P. L. Kapitza to Niels Bohr, November 15, 1933, in Boag, Rubinin, and Shoenberg, Kapitza, pp. 315–316.
19. Ibid.
20. Letter of P. L. Kapitza to Max Born, February 26, 1936, ibid., p. 324.
21. Max Born, My Life: Recollections of a Nobel Laureate (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1978), p. 281.
22. Today, there is an S. V. Vavilov Institute of History of Science and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Sergei Vavilov had a brother, Nikolai Vavilov, who was a world renowned botanist. His disagreement with the charlatan Lysenko—whom initially Nikolai had supported—led to Nikolai’s murder in 1943 by malnutrition in prison at the age of fifty-five. He was rehabilitated in 1955.
23. D. Shoenberg, “Piotr Leonidovich Kapitza July 9, 1894–April 8, 1984,” Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 1985, 31, 326–374; actual quote, p. 349.
24. Ibid.
25. Alan L. Mackay, A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (Bristol: Adam Hilger, 1991), p. 150.
26. B. S. Gorobets, Krug Landau i Lifshitsa[Landau’s and Lifshits’s circle] (Moscow: URSS, 2008), chap. 10, “P. L. Kapitza: ‘Kentaur,’” pp. 180–225.
27. Letter of P. L. Kapitza to I. V. Stalin, December 1, 1935, in Andreev, Kapitza Tamm Semenov, pp. 159–164.
28. Letter of I. V. Stalin to P. L. Kapitza, April 4, 1946, ibid., p. 359 (the facsimile of Stalin’s letter) and p. 378 (the translation of the letter).
29. Letter of P. L. Kapitza to V. M. Molotov, July 6, 1936, in Boag, Rubinin, and Shoenberg, Kapitza, pp. 331–333.
30. Letter of P. L. Kapitza to V. M. Molotov, July 6, 1936, ibid., pp. 331–333.
31. Ibid., p. 332.
32. Ibid., p. 339.
33. A. S. Sonin, “Fizicheskii idealism” Istoriya odnoi ideologicheskoi kampanii [“Physical idealism”: The history of an ideological campaign] (Moscow: Fiziko-Matematicheskaya Literatura, 1994), p. 57.
34. John Campbell, Rutherford: Scientist Supreme. (Christchurch, New Zealand: AAS Publications, 1999), p. 474
35. Sébastian Balibar, “Looking Back at Superfluid Helium,” Séminare Poincaré 2003, 1, 11–20.
36. P. L. Kapitza, “Plasma and the Controlled Thermonuclear Reaction,” Nobel Lectures Physics 1971–1980 (Singapore: World Scientific, 1992), pp. 424–436.
37. P. L. Kapitza, Nature 1938, 141, 74; J. F. Allen, A. D. Misener, Nature 1938, 141:75.
38. Boris S. Gorobets, “Piotr L. Kapitza Summoned to ‘Lubianka’ (Ministry of Interior Affairs—NKVD): Worn Myth and a First Non-Contradictory Version of Landau’s Liberation in 1939,” Istoria nauki i tekhniki, 2011, no. 10, pp. 24–34; and private communications from Boris Gorobets by e-mail in October 2011.
39. Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History (New York: Anchor Books, 2004).
40. H. J. DeWolf Smyth, Atomic Energy for Military Purposes: The Official Report on the Development of the Atomic Bomb under the Auspices of the United States Government, 1940–1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1945).
41. Boag, Rubinin, and Shoenberg, Kapitza, pp. 372–378.
42. Ibid., p. 378.
43. Ibid., p. 389.
44. Andreev, Kapitza Tamm Semenov, p. 44.
45. Ibid., p. 28.
46. Alden Whitman, “A Brilliant Scientist,” New York Times, April 3, 1968, pp. 1 and 47; the article was mainly about Lev Landau.
47. Boag, Rubinin, and Shoenberg, Kapitza, p. 390.
48. Ibid., p. 399. Indeed, for example, even the rigorous dress codes for the Nobel Prize award ceremony prescribing white ties for males allow wearing a national dress instead.
49. Letter of P. L. Kapitza to N. S. Khrushchev, September 22, 1955, ibid., pp. 403–404.
50. Letter of P. L. Kapitza to N. S. Khrushchev, December 15, 1955, ibid., pp. 404–408.
51. N. S. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament (Boston, 1976), pp. 67–73.
52. Ibid.
53. P. L. Kapitza, Experiment, Theory, Practice (Dordrecht, Boston, London: D. Reidel, 1980). This reference is not to the Italian edition mentioned in the text.
54. Letter from P. L. Kapitza to Yu. V. Andropov, April 22, 1980, in Boag, Rubinin, and Shoenberg, Kapitza, pp. 413–416.
55. Andrei Sakharov, Memoirs (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), pp. 303–304; Andrei Sakharov, Moscow and Beyond 1986–1989 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), pp. 11–12.
56. Snow, Variety, p. 19.
Chapter 5
1. George Gamow, My World Line: An Informal Autobiography (New York: Viking Press, 1970), p. 50.
2. Boris Gessen was the author of the entry. Gessen became a victim of Stalin’s Terror in 1937–1938. Note that Gessen’s name often figures as Hessen in the literature elsewhere.
3. Gamow, My World Line, p. 96.
4. The original Russian article was translated into English and published: G. Gamow, D. Ivanenko, and L. Landau, “World Constants and Limiting Transitions,” Physics of Atomic Nuclei 2002, 65, 1373–1375.
5. A. S. Sonin, “Fizicheskii idealism” Istoriya odnoi ideologicheskoi kampanii [“Physical idealism”: The history of an ideological campaign] (Moscow: Fiziko-Matematicheskaya Literatura, 1994), p. 129.
6. I. Hargittai and M. Hargittai, “Lev D. Landau (1908–1968): in Memoriam,” Structural Chemistry, 2008, 19, 181–184.
7. Istvan Hargittai, Judging Edward Teller: A Closer Look at One of the Most Influential Scientists of the Twentieth Century (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2010).
8. Gorobets, Landau I., p. 181. Note that in his Landau trilogy, being referred to here as Landau I, Landau II, and Landau III, Gorobets made use of other books about Landau in addition to his own research. The sources are meticulously documented in Gorobets’s volumes.
9. Ibid.
10. The text of the leaflet is reproduced in Gorobets, Landau I, p. 284.
11. Feinberg, E. L., Physicists: Epoch and Personalities (New Jersey, London, Singapore: World Scientific, 2011), p. 396.
12. Boris S. Gorobets, Krug Landau: Zhizn geniya[Landau’s circle: The life of a genius], 2nd corrected and augmented ed. (Moscow: URSS, 2007), p. 298, n.1.
13. Ibid., p. 299.
14. Ibid., p. 301.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid., pp. 304–305.
18. Ibid., p. 304
19. Gorobets, Landau I, p. 37.
20. Magdolna Hargittai and Istvan Hargittai, Candid Science IV: Conversations with Famous Physicists (London: Imperial College Press, 2004), “Laszlo Tisza.”
21. Gorobets, Landau I, p. 113.
22. Hargittai and Hargittai, Candid Science IV, “David Shoenberg,” pp. 688–697; actual quote, p. 695.
23. Gorobets, Landau I, p. 271; see also G. E. Gorelik, Priroda, 1991, no. 11, 93–104.
24. Ibid., p. 121, after Landau-Drobantseva, 1999, p. 82.
25. Hargittai and Hargittai, Candid Science IV, p. 696.
26. Ibid., p. 697.
27. Ibid., p. 295.
28. A. A. Abrikosov, Akademik L. D. Landau: Kratkaya biografiya i obzor nauchnikh rabot [Academician L. D. Landau: Brief biography and review of scientific works] (Moscow: Nauka, 1965).
29. I. M. Khalatnikov, ed., Vospominaniya o L. D. Landau [Reminiscences about L. D. Landau] (Moscow: Nauka, 1988).
30. E. M. Lifshits, ibid., pp. 7–31
31. N. E. Alekseevskii, ibid., pp. 40–42.
32. I. M. Khalatnikov, Dau, Kentaur i drugie (Top nonsecret) [Dau, Cantaur and others (top nonsecret)] (Moscow: Fizmatlit, 2008), p. 58.
33. Feinberg, Physicists: Epoch and Personalities, p. 387.
34. Ibid., p. 388.
35. Gorobets Landau I, appendix 3, doc. no.12, pp. 296–297.
36. Atomnii Proekt SSSR I 1938–1945 (Moscow: Nauka-Fizmatlit, 1999); Atomnii Proekt SSSR II 1945–1954 (Moscow-Sarov: Nauka-Fizmatlit, 1999).
37. Gorobets Landau II, p. 51.
38. Ibid., p. 56.
39. Ibid., pp. 61–63.
40. Gorobets, Landau II, p. 108.
41. Ibid., p. 109.
42. Feinberg, Physicists: Epoch and Personalities, p. 379.
43. Gorobets Landau II, p. 114.
44. Feinberg, Physicists: Epoch and Personalities, p. 382.
45. Ibid., pp. 114–123.
46. Ibid., pp. 123–126.
47. Gorobets Landau I, p. 185.
48. Ibid., pp. 185–188.
49. Ibid., p. 189.
50. Ibid., p. 190.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid., pp. 192–194.
53. A. M. Blokh, Sovietskii Soyuz v interyere nobelevskikh premii: Fakti, dokumenti, razmyshlenie, kommentarii [The Soviet Union in the interior of the Nobel Prizes: Facts; documents; reflections; commentaries] (Moscow: Fizmatlit, 2005), p. 501.
54. Ibid., p. 502.
55. Ibid., p. 556.
56. Alden Whitman, “A Brilliant Scientist,” New York Times, April 3, 1968, pp. 1 and 47; actual quote, p. 47.
57. Ibid.
58. Gorobets, Landau I, p. 254.
59. Ya. B. Zeldovich and M. I. Kaganov, trans. J. B. Sykes, “Evgenii Mikhailovich Lifshitz February 21, 1915–October 29, 1985,” Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 1990, 36, 336–357; actual quote, p. 345.
60. Ibid., p. 340.
61. A. A. Roukhadze, M. A. Liberman, and B. S. Gorobets, “Academician E. M. Lifshits: Outstanding Physicist and Scientific Writer. Part II. The Scale of a Scientist,” Istoriya nauki i tekhniki, 2011, no. 3, 44–53.
62. Ibid., p. 45.
63. B. S. Gorobets, “Academician E. M. Lifshits: An Outstanding Physicist and Scientific Writer. Part I: The Scale of Personality,” Istoriya nauki i tekhniki, 2011, no. 2. The quotation is from D. E. Khmelnitskii, 1994.
64. Ibid.
65. Zeldovich and Kaganov, Memoirs, p. 343.
66. Roukhadze, Liberman, and Gorobets, “Academician E. M. Lifshits,” p. 50.
67. Gorobets, Landau III, p. 41.
68. Ibid.
69. Berezka means “birch tree” in a diminutive version.
70. Gorobets, Landau III, p. 37.
71. Ibid, p. 24.
72. Ibid., p. 45.
Chapter 6
1. Istvan Hargittai and Magdolna Hargittai, Candid Science VI: More Conversations with Famous Scientists (London: Imperial College Press, 2006), “Vitaly L. Ginzburg,” pp. 808–837; actual quote, p. 836.
2. Vitaly L. Ginzburg, “Notes of an Amateur Astrophysicist,” Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 1990, 28, 1–36; actual quote, p. 1.
3. V. L. Ginzburg, “Ob ottse i nashei seme” [“About my father and my family”], Uspekhi fizicheskikh nauk, 2010, 180, 1217–1230; actual reference, p. 1226.
4. Ibid.; see also note 6, p. 1226.
5. Vitaly L. Ginzburg, “Autobiography,” Nobel Foundation website.
6. Vitaly L. Ginzburg, About Science, Myself and Others (Bristol and Philadelphia: Institute of Physics Publishing, 2005), p. 373.
7. Ginzburg, “Notes of an Amateur Astrophysicist,” p. 4.
8. Ginzburg, Nobel autobiography.
9. Ginzburg, About Science, pp. 375–376.
10. Ginzburg, “Ob ottse i nashei seme,” p. 1222.
11. Ginzburg, About Science, p. 378.
12. Ibid., p. 382.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Genaddii A. Sardanashvily, Dmitrii Ivanenko—Superzvezda sovetskoi fiziki: Nenapisennie memuari [Dmitrii Ivanenko—superstar of Soviet physics: Unwritten memoirs], (Moscow: URSS, 2010).
16. Ginzburg, About Science, p. 220 and p. 384.
17. Ibid., p. 220.
18. Hargittai and Hargittai, Candid Science VI, p. 821.
19. On Heisenberg’s attitude during and after World War II, see, e.g., Istvan Hargittai, Judging Edward Teller: A Closer Look at One of the Most Influential Scientists of the Twentieth Century (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2010), pp. 81–90.
20. Hargittai and Hargittai, Candid Science VI, p. 821.
21. Ibid., p. 822.
22. Ibid.
23. Ginzburg, “Notes of an Amateur Astrophysicist,” p. 12.
24. Vitaly L. Ginzburg, O fizike i astrofizike [About physics and astrophysics], 3rd rev. ed. (Moscow: Buro Quantum, 1995), pp. 467–468.
25. Ibid., p. 812.
26. Vitaly Ginzburg, Nobel Lecture, December 8, 2003, Nobel Foundation website, pp. 96–127.
27. Hargittai and Hargittai, Candid Science VI, p. 821.
28. Ginzburg, Nobel Lecture, p. 104.
29. Yu. I. Solov’ev, Herald of the Russian Academy of Science 1997, 7, 627.
30. Hargittai and Hargittai, Candid Science VI, pp. 815–818.
31. Ginzburg, Nobel Lecture, p. 121.
32. Ginzburg, O fizike i astrofizike, pp. 312–349 “Experience of Scientific Autobiography”.
33. Ginzburg, “Notes of an Amateur Astrophysicist,” p. 14.
34. These two volumes are available in English translation, Selected Works of Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich. Volume I. Chemical Physics and Hydrodynamics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992); Selected Works of Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich. Volume II. Particles, Nuclei, and the Universe (Princeton, NJ; Princeton University Press, 1993).
35. V. L. Ginzburg, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, vol. 40, (London: The Royal Society, 1994), pp. 431–441.
36. Hargittai and Hargittai, Candid Science VI, p. 831.
37. Ginzburg, O fizike i astrofizike, pp. 312–349.
38. Hargittai and Hargittai, Candid Science VI, p. 810.
39. Ginzburg, “Notes of an Amateur Astrophysicist,” p. 21.
Chapter 7
1. Balazs Hargittai and István Hargittai, Candid Science V: Conversations with Famous Scientists (London: Imperial College Press, 2005), “Alexei A. Abrikosov,” pp. 176–197.
2. E-mail message from Alexei A. Abrikosov to the author, January 3, 2012.
3. Dmitrii Abrikosov, Revelations of a Russian Diplomat; The Memoirs of Dmitrii I. Abrikosov, ed. George A. Lensen (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964).
4. Isaak M. Khalatnikov, Dau, Kentavr i drugie (Top nonsecret) [Dau, Centaur and others (top nonsecret)] (Moscow: Fizmatlit, 2008), pp. 26–27.
5. Boris S. Gorobets, Krug Landau i Lifshitsa [Landau’s and Lifshits’s circle] (Moscow: URSS, 2008), p. 136
6. Hargittai and Hargittai, Candid Science V, pp. 187–188.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., p. 188.
9. Ibid., p. 189.
10. Ibid.
11. Gorobets, Krug Landau i Lifshitsa, p. 131.
12. Sergei Leskov, op-ed article, “America’s Soviet Scientists,” New York Times, July 15, 1993. The English text here is the translation from the original Russian statement, e.g., Gorobets, Krug Landau i Lifshitsa, p. 142.
13. Ibid., p. 145; Pravda, December 17, 1993, no. 211.
14. Alexander Migdal, letter in the New York Times, July 25, 1993.
15. Alexei A. Abrikosov, Nobel Lecture, Nobel Foundation website, pp. 59–67; actual quote, p. 65.
16. The two papers appeared in 1952, in the same issue of Doklady Akademii Nauk SSSR; Abrikosov, p. 489; Zavaritskii, p. 501.
17. Hargittai and Hargittai, Candid Science V, p. 184.
18. Ibid., p. 181.
19. Gorobets, Krug Landau i Lifshitsa, p. 140.
20. Hargittai and Hargittai, Candid Science V, p. 183.
21. Abrikosov, Nobel Lecture, pp. 65–66.
22. István Hargittai and Magdolna Hargittai, Candid Science VI: More Conversations with Famous Scientists (London: Imperial College Press, 2006), “Vitaly L. Ginzburg,” pp. 808–837; actual quote, p. 816.
23. Hargittai and Hargittai, Candid Science V, p. 195.
24. Ibid., p. 196.
25. Ibid.
Chapter 8
1. Istvan Hargittai, Candid Science: Conversations with Famous Chemists, ed. Magdolna Hargittai (London: Imperial College Press, 2000), “Nikolai N. Semenov,” 466–475. When the interview was broadcast and then also printed in Hungarian, I provided its Hungarian translation. For the Candid Science series, the conversation was translated into English. When the Russian translation of the first volume of Candid Science was being prepared, the English translation was translated back into Russian. When I learned about this, I sent a copy of the original tape to the editor of the Russian translation of Candid Science, Professor Petr M. Zorkii of Moscow State University. He found the two texts in excellent agreement.
2. Ioffe Institute 1918–1998: Development and Research Activities, editor-in-chief, Zh. Alferov (St. Petersburg: Ioffe Institute, 1998), p. 245.
3. I. V. Obreimov, “Molodie godi” [“Young Years”], in Vospominaniya ob akademike Nikolae Nikolaeviche Semenove [Reminiscences about academician Nikolai Nikolaevich Semenov], ed. A. E. Shilov (Moscow: Nauka, 1993), pp. 29–30.
4. Olga Liverovskaya, “Istoriya odnoi semi” [“The history of a family”], Neva 2005, no. 7. I am grateful to Alexey Semenov for a copy of this article. Alexey Semenov is the grandson of Nikolai Semenov and Yulii Khariton.
5. Hargittai, Candid Science, pp. 468–469.
6. Yu. B. Khariton, “Nachalo” [“The Beginning”], in Shilov, Vospominaniya, pp. 30–42.
7. Letter of Yu. B. Khariton to N. N. Semenov, March 13, 1927, in A. F. Andreev, general editor, Kapitza Tamm Semenov: v ocherkakh i pismakh [Kapitza Tamm Semenov: In sketches and letters] (Moscow: Vagrius Priroda, 1998), “Nikolai Nikolaevich Semenov,” pp. 401–575; actual reference, pp. 439–441.
8. Yu. B. Khariton, “U istokov yadernogo dela” [“At the sources of things nuclear”), in Andreev, Kapitza Tamm Semenov, Khariton’s chapter, pp. 432–441.
9. Istvan Hargittai, The Martians of Science: Five Physicists Who Changed the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006; 2007), p. 76.
10. Nikolai N. Semenov, Tsepnie Reaktsii [Chain reactions] (Leningrad: Goskhimizdat, 1934; in English translation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1935).
11. Khariton in Andreev, Kapitza Tamm Semenov, p. 437.
12. Based on private communication from Alexey Semenov in March 2012, via e-mail.
13. Andreev, Kapitza Tamm Semenov, p. 557.
14. Ibid., p. 556.
15. Khariton in Andreev, Kapitza Tamm Semenov, p. 433.
16. A. Yu. Semenov in Andreev, Kapitza Tamm Semenov, p. 569.
17. There is a book about Bronshtein: Gennady E. Gorelik and Victor Ya. Frenkel, Matvei Petrovich Bronshtein and Soviet Theoretical Physics in the Thirties (Birhauser, 1994).
18. A. S. Sonin, “Fizicheskii idealism” Istoriya odnoi ideologicheskoi kampanii [“Physical idealism” The history of an ideological campaign] (Moscow: Fiziko-Matematicheskaya Literatura, 1994), p. 55.
19. Nikolai S. Akulov (1900–1976) was a sad figure. In the civil war, he fought in the Red Army. Afterward, he studied physics at Moscow State University and worked there, rising to Professor of Physics. His research covered ferromagnetism and also chain reactions.
20. Yu. I. Solovev in Andreev, Kapitza Tamm Semenov, pp. 442–445.
21. A. M. Blokh, Sovietskii Soyuz v interyere nobelevskikh premii: Fakti, dokumenti, razmyshlenie, kommentarii [The Soviet Union in the interior of the Nobel Prizes: Facts; documents; reflections; commentaries] (Moscow: Fizmatlit, 2005), p. 326.
22. The label “cosmopolitan” later became a euphemism for Jews, but before the war it did not yet have this meaning. It simply meant, for example, bowing to the West.
23. Andreev, Kapitza Tamm Semenov, pp. 444–445.
24. Ibid., p. 445.
25. The title of Akulov’s book was Teoria tsepnikh processov [Theory of Chain Processes].
26. F. I. Dubovitskii in Andreev, Kapitza Tamm Semenov, pp. 446–453.
27. At the time it was called the Presidium of the Central Committee; at other times, it was called the Politburo of the Central Committee.
28. A. Yu. Semenov, in Andreev, Kapitza Tamm Semenov, pp. 573–574.
29. S. G. Entelis, in Shilov, Vospominaniya, p. 83.
30. Osypyan, in Andreev, Kapitza Tamm Semenov, p. 558.
31. Photo insert in Andreev, Kapitza Tamm Semenov, preceding page 449.
32. Khariton, in Shilov, Vospominaniya, p. 42.
33. L. G. Shcherbakova, “My Great Man and Friend,” in Shilov, Vospominaniya, pp. 217–222, p. 222
34. Shilov, in Andreev, Kapitza Tamm Semenov, pp. 561–562.
35. Entelis, in Shilov, Vospominaniya, p. 85.
36. Private communication from Alexey Semenov in March 2012, via e-mail.
37. Nauka i Zhizn 1965, no 4, pp. 38–43
38. A. Yu. Semenov, in Andreev, Kapitza Tamm Semenov, pp. 570–571.
39. Shilov, in Andreev, Kapitza Tamm Semenov, p. 563.
40. Entelis, in Shilov, Vospominaniya, p. 86.
41. Blokh, Sovietskii Soyuz, p. 326.
42. Julius Glaser, “About Lars Gunnar Sillén,” Chemical Intelligencer 1999, 5(4), 4–5.
43. Istvan Hargittai, “A Curious Case of Soviet Nobel Aspirations,” Chemical Intelligencer 1999, 5(3), 61–64; actual quote, p. 62.
44. Blokh, Sovietskii Soyuz, p. 429.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid., p. 478.
47. Conversations with A. Yu. Semenov, June 2011, Moscow.
48. Vitalii I. Goldanskii, Essays of a Soviet Scientist (Springer, 2009), p. 53.
49. Solovev, in Andreev, Kapitza Tamm Semenov, p. 445.
50. Sonin, “Fizicheskii idealism,” p. 133
51. Entelis, Shilov, Vospominaniya, p. 83.
52. Letter of N. N. Semenov to P. L. Kapitza, March 25, 1922, in Andreev, Kapitza Tamm Semenov, pp. 482–486; actual quote, pp. 484–485; see also, A. Yu. Semenov, in Andreev, Kapitza Tamm Semenov, pp. 553–554.
53. Hargittai, Candid Science, pp. 472–474.
Chapter 9
1. An excellent book with many contributions by Yulii B. Khariton and many about him as scientist and human being is available in Russian, Yulii Borisovich Khariton: Put’ dlinoyu v vek [Yulii Borisovich Khariton: Century-long journey] (Moscow: Nauka, 2005).
2. J. Chariton and Z. Walta, “Oxydation von Phosphordämpfen bei niedrigen Drucken,” Z. Phys. 1926, 39(7–8), 547–556. Khariton’s and Valta’s names were spelled according to the German transliteration in this German-language article.
3. Yulii Borisovich Khariton, 2005, p. 37.
4. V. A. Tsukerman, “Kriterii Kharitona” [“Khariton criteria”], ibid., pp. 277–280.
5. P. E. Rubinin, “Khariton i Kapitza” [“Khariton and Kapitza”], ibid., pp. 253–277.
6. Samuel A. Goudsmit, Alsos (New York: Henry Schuman, 1947).
7. Yulii Borisovich Khariton, 2005, pp. 125–127.
8. Ibid.
9. L. V. Altshuler, “‘Zateryannii mir’ Kharitona” [Khariton’s lost world], ibid., pp. 286–287.
10. The Presidential Commission found that there had been internal warnings about the faulty seal design, but they were ignored. Taking a risk seemed acceptable, “because they ‘got away with it last time.’ As Commissioner [Richard] Feynman observed, the decision making was ‘a kind of Russian roulette,’” http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v1ch6.htm.
11. Boris S. Gorobets, Krug Landau i Lifshitsa [Landau’s and Lifshits’s circle] Moscow: URSS, 2008), p. 103.
12. S. V. Vasilchenko, “Tysyacha trista slov” [One thousand three hundred words], Khariton, pp. 392–394. According to Khariton’s grandson, in the early 1990s Khariton served as consultant for a British documentary for which he was paid about fifteen hundred to two thousand US Dollars, which he kept in his safe before giving the money to his grandson. Alexey Semenov, private communication in March 2012 via e-mail.
13. V. E. Fortov, “… chtoby stremyas’ k luchshemy, ne natvorit’ khudshego” (… in striving for the best, we should avoid the worst), Yulii Borisovich Khariton, pp. 288–292.
14. A. K. Chernyshev, “Rol’ Yuliya Borisovicha Kharitona v obespechenii yadernogo pariteta v 70–80 gody” [Yulii Borisovich Khariton’s role in maintaining nuclear parity in the 1970s and 1980s], ibid., pp. 381–385; actual quote, p. 384.
15. Yu. B. Khariton, “Obrashchenie k chitatelyam” [“Appeal to the readers”], ibid., pp. 363–364.
16. Yuli Khariton and Yuri Smirnov, “The Khariton Version,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 1993 May, 20–31.
17. Ibid., p. 26.
18. Alexey Semenov, private communication in March 2012 via e-mail.
19. Khariton and Smirnov, “Khariton Version,” p. 29.
20. John von Neumann said this with reference to J. Robert Oppenheimer’s quoting the Hindu scripture, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” Istvan Hargittai, Martians of Science (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 125.
21. Edward Teller’s letter of January 17, 1995, to the Honorable Hazel O’Leary, secretary of energy, U.S. Department of Energy, Washington, DC, 20545. I am grateful to Alexey Semenov, Moscow, for a copy of this letter. See more about it in Istvan Hargittai, Judging Edward Teller: A Closer Look at One of the Most Influential Scientists of the Twentieth Century (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2010), p. 434.
22. Hargittai, Judging Edward Teller, p. 433.
23. Edward Teller, letter of February 9, 1999, to Siegfried S. Hecker, Los Alamos National Laboratory. Hoover Archives, Stanford University.
24. Tam Dalyell, “Obituary: Yuli Khariton,” The Independent, Monday, December 23, 1996.
25. Khariton, 2005, p. 428.
Chapter 10
1. The citation of Prigogine’s Nobel Prize was “for his contributions to nonequilibrium thermodynamics, particularly the theory of dissipative structures.” The dissipative forces usually destroy structures and thus they act in the direction of entropy increase. Usually, we are used to thinking in terms of destroying structures and thus violating spatial symmetry in space. The oscillating reactions are considered dissipative structures violating symmetry in time.
2. Irving R. Epstein, “Anatol Zhabotinsky (1938–2008),” Nature 2008, October 23, 455, 1053.
3. Istvan Hargittai, Candid Science III: More Conversations with Famous Chemists, ed. Magdolna Hargittai (London: Imperial College Press, 2003), “Ilya Prigogine,” pp. 422–431; actual quote, p. 426.
4. Simon E. Shnol, Geroi, zlodei, konformisti rossiiskoi nauki [Heroes, villains, conformists of Russian science] (Moscow: Kron-Press, 2001; my copy is the second edition, but there is a third edition (Moscow: URSS, 2009).
5. A brief historical introduction is given in Anatol M. Zhabotinsky, “A History of Chemical Oscillations and Waves,” CHAOS, 1991, 1 (4), 379–386.
6. I. Prigogine and R. Balescu, Bull. Acad. R. Belg., 1955, 41, 917; 1956, 42, 256.
7. The Krebs cycle was named after the German-British biochemist Hans Krebs. It is part of the chemical reactions describing the process of aerobic respiration in the organism. Sometimes it is mentioned as the citric acid cycle—citric acid being the first product in the cycle, which then reappears at the end of the cycle.
8. Private communications in February 2012 from Simon Shnol, by e-mail.
9. B. P. Belousov, “Periodicheski deistvuyushchaya reaktsiya i ee mekhanizm” [“Periodically working reaction and its mechanism”], in The Collected Abstracts of Radiation Medicine in 1958 (Moscow: Medgiz, 1959), pp. 145–147.
10. Shnol, Heroes, Villains, p. 296.
11. Ibid., p. 434.
12. Hargittai, Candid Science III, p.
13. I am grateful to Zoltán Nosztíciusz for this example.
14. The rabbit/fox population example is usually referred to as an illustration for the so-called Lotka-Volterra model in mathematical ecology; Y. Takeuchi, Global Dynamical Properties of Lotka-Volterra Systems (Singapore: World Scientific, 1996).
15. Private communication in March 2012 from Michael Bukatin, by e-mail.
16. A. M. Zhabotinsky, Biofizika 1964, 9, 306.
17. A. M. Zhabotinsky, Proc. Akad. Sci. USSR 1964, 157, 392.
18. V. M. Vitvitsky, D. P. Kharakoz, T. A. Tverdislov, L. A. Piruziyan, F. I. Ataullakhanov, G. R. Ivanitsky, and E. E. Fesenko, “Anatol M. Zhabotinsky (1938–2008),” Biophysics, 2009, 54, 549–550. Biophysics is the English translation of the Russian journal Biofizika in which Zhabotinsky’s first paper appeared in 1964.
19. S. E. Shnol, “In Memoriam A. M. Zhabotinsky,” Biophysics. 2009, 54, 551–553.
20. The English translation of its title was “Study of Homogeneous Chemical Auto-Oscillatory Systems.”
21. A. M. Zhabotinsky, Kontsentratsionnie avtokolebaniya [Concentrational Oscillations] (Moscow: Nauka, 1974).
22. A. N. Zaikin and A. M. Zhabotinsky, Nature, 1970, 225, 535.
23. I am grateful to Michael Bukatin for a discussion of this approach in April 2012, by e-mail. See also, Vitvitsky et al., “Anatol M. Zhabotinsky (1938–2008),” p. 550.
24. Shnol, “In Memoriam A. M. Zhabotinsky,” p. 552.
25. Private communication from Michael Bukatin, April 2012, by e-mail.
26. Istvan Hargittai, Our Lives: Encounters of a Scientist (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 2004), pp. 79–81.
27. Zhabotinsky’s former wife and their son, Michael Bukatin, also moved to the United States, in 1989. Michael eventually earned his PhD degree from Brandeis University. Zhabotinsky kept up his connection with his son, his only child: Private communication from Michael Bukatin, April 2012, by e-mail.
28. I am grateful to Miklós Orbán for sharing his impressions of Zhabotinsy’s Brandeis experience with me.
29. Private communications in March 2012 from Simon Shnol, by e-mail.
30. Hargittai, Candid Science III, p. 427.
1. Erlen Fedin, Izbrannoe [Selected works] (Krasnoyarsk: Polikom, 2008), p. 83.
2. Istvan Hargittai, Drive and Curiosity: What Fuels the Passion for Science (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2011), pp. 95–96.
3. L. Pauling, M. Delbrück, “The Nature of the Intermolecular Forces Operative in Biological Processes,” Science, 1940, 92, 77–79.
4. A. I. Kitaigorodskii, “The Close-Packing of Molecules in Crystals of Organic Compounds,” Journal of Physics (USSR) 1945, 9, 351–352.
5. Istvan Hargittai and Magdolna Hargittai, In Our Own Image: Personal Symmetry in Discovery (New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum, 2000), chap. 6, “Aleksandr Kitaigorodskii,” pp. 112–142.
6. Ibid., pp. 130–132.
7. C. H. MacGillavry, Symmetry Aspects of M. C. Escher’s Periodic Drawings (Utrecht: Bohn, Scheltem and Holkema, 1976).
8. See, e.g., with references therein, Istvan Hargittai, “Crystal Structures and Culture: In Memoriam Khudu Mamedov (1927–1988),” Structural Chemistry, 2007, 18, 535–536.
9. Lucretius, The Nature of Things [De rerum natura], 1st ed., trans. F. O. Copley (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977). The quoted passage is from Book VI, p. 72, lines 1084–1086.
10. N. I. Kuznetsova, ed., Chelovek, kotorii ne umel bit ravnodyshnim: Yurii Timofeevich Struchkov v nauke i zhizhni [The man who was unable to be indifferent: Yurii Timofeevich Struchkov in science and in life] (Moscow: Russian Academy of Sciences, 2005), pp. 121–123.
11. Tatyana Mastryukova, “Years of Studying,” in Kuznetsova, Chelovek, pp. 79–82; actual quote, p. 82.
12. Tatyana Khotsyanova, “How It All Started,” in Kuznetsova, Chelovek, pp. 83–97; actual quote, p. 85.
13. Ibid., p. 87.
14. Ibid., p. 90.
15. Kuznetsova, Chelovek, p. 165.
16. Kuznetsova, Chelovek, p. 137.
17. P. M. Zorky, “The Development of Organic Crystal Chemistry at the Moscow State University,” ACH Models in Chemistry, 1993, 130, 173–181; actual story, p. 174.
18. Hargittai and Hargittai, In Our Own Image, pp. 120–121.
19. Istvan Hargittai, Our Lives: Encounters of a Scientist (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 2004), p. 100.
20. Jack D. Dunitz, “A. I. Kitaigorodsky: Personal Reminiscences,” ACH Models in Chemistry, 1993, 130, 153–157.
21. Zorky, pp. 177–178.
22. Ibid.
23. N. N. Petropavlov, in A. I. Kitaigorodskii: Uchonii, uchitel, drug [A. I. Kitaigorodskii: Scientist, teacher, friend] (Moscow: Moskvovedenie, 2011), pp. 96–113.
24. Fedin, pp. 83–86.
1. Emiliya G. Perevalova, “Aleksandr N. Nesmeyanov,” Chemical Intelligencer, 2000, 6(2), 32–36.
2. Ibid., p. 33.
3. A. Todd, “O Nesmeyanove,” in M. I. Kabachnik, ed., Aleksandr Nikolaevich Nesmeyanov: Uchonii i chelovek [Aleksandr Nikolaevich Nesmeyanov: Scientist and Human Being] (Moscow: Nauka, 1988), pp. 49–50.
4. Perevalova, “Aleksandr N. Nesmeyanov,” pp. 35–36.
5. Yu. A. Ovchinnikov. “Neskolko slov ob Engelhardte” [“A few words about Engelhardt”]. In Vospominaniya o V. A. Engelhardte [Remembering V. A. Engelhardt] ed. A. A. Baev (Moscow: Nauka, 1989), pp. 104–108.
6. Ibid., p. 106.
7. W. A. Engelhardt, “Life and Science,” Annual Review of Biochemistry 1982, 51, 1–19.
8. Ibid., p. 36.
9. N. I. Kuznetsova, ed., Chelovek, kotorii ne umel bit ravnodyshnim: Yurii Timofeevich Struchkov v nauke i zhizhni [The man who was unable to be indifferent: Yurii Timofeevich Struchkov in science and in life], (Moscow: Russian Academy of Sciences, 2005), p. 126.
10. Ibid., p. 165.
11. Erlen Fedin, Izbrannoe [Selected works] (Krasnoyarsk: Polikom, 2008).
12. Kuznetsova, Chelovek, p. 294.
13. Ibid., pp. 125–126.
14. Jan Kandror, private communication in February 2012, by e-mail.
15. Kuznetsova, Chelovek, pp. 125–126.
16. Ibid. p. 128
17. A. N. Nesmeyanov, Na kachelyakh XX veka [Sitting on the swings of the twentieth century] (Moscow: Nauka, 1999).
18. Kuznetsova, Chelovek, pp. 129–130.
19. Sostoyanie teorii khimicheskogo stroeniya v organicheskoi khimii [State of theory of chemical structure in organic chemistry], All-Union Conference June 11–14, 1951, stenographic minutes (Moscow: Publishing House of the Academy of Dciences of the USSR, 1952).
20. Linus Pauling, The Nature of the Chemical Bond (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). The Russian translation of its second edition appeared in 1947.
21. George Wheland, Theory of Resonance and Its Applications to Organic Chemistry (New York: Wiley, 1944). Its Russian translation appeared in 1948.
22. The English translation of the report has appeared: D. N. Kursanov, M. G. Gonikberg, B. M. Dubinin, M. I. Kabachnik, E. D. Kaverzneva, E. N. Prilezhaeva, N. D. Sokolov, and R. Kh. Freidlina, “The Present State of the Chemical Structural Theory,” Journal of Chemical Education, 1952, (1), 2–13
23. V. M. Tatevskii and M. I. Shakhparonov, “About a Machistic Theory in Chemistry and Its Propagandists,” Journal of Chemical Education, 1952, (1), 13–15. These are extracts from the original Russian article by these authors in Voprosi Filosofii [Problems in philosophy] 1949, 3, 176.
24. Istvan Hargittai, Candid Science: Conversations with Famous Chemists, ed. Magdolna Hargittai (London: Imperial College Press, 2000).
25. J. Chatt and M. I. Rybinskaya, “Aleksandr Nikolaevich Nesmeyanov September 9, 1899–January 17, 1980,” Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 1983, 29, 399–480.
26. Hargittai, Candid Science, “Elena G. Galpern and Ivan V. Stankevich,” pp. 322–331; actual quote, p. 327. As is known, each of the two teams has eleven players. Nowadays not only men, but women also play soccer.
27. D. A. Bochvar and E. G. Galpern, Doklady Akademii Nauk, 1973, 209, 610–612.
28. H. W. Kroto, J. R. Heath, S. C. O’Brien, R. F. Curl, and R. E. Smalley, Nature 1985, 318, 162–163.
29. W. Krätschmer, L. D. Lamb, K. Fostiropoulos, and D. R. Huffman, Nature 1990, 347, 354–358.
Epilogue
1. The expression of “Iron Curtain” was used in Winston Churchill’s speech on March 5, 1946, in Fulton, Missouri: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”
2. Istvan Hargittai, Martians of Science: Five Physicists Who Changed the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 156–157.
3. Mark Popovsky, The Vavilov Affair (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1984), pp. 197–199.
4. Rita Levi-Montalcini, In Praise of Imperfection (New York: Basic Books, 1989).
5. Ronald Hingley, Nightingale Fever: Russian Poets in Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981), p. xii.
6. Ibid., p. xiii.
7. Anna Akhmatova, Pamyati Anny Akhmatova. Stikhi. Pis’ma. L. Chukovskaya (Paris, YMCA, 1974) p. 188. Quoted in Hingley, Nightingale Fever, p. xiii.
8. Translation by Ilya Shambat: http://lib.udm.ru/lib/POEZIQ/MANDELSHTAM/tristia_engl.txt_Piece40.01.
9. For references, see, Hingley, Nightingale Fever, p. 73.