Moskovskiĭ gosudarstvennyĭ universitet im. M.V. Lomonosova [Moscow State University]

Interview with Lev Gindilis, Russian astronomer and a pioneer of modern SETI research. Leonid Gurvits translated this interview in real-time. Gindilis discusses his studies in optical astronomy at Moscow State University. He describes how the work of his friend Nikolai Kardashev inspired him to switch his area of focus and join the radio astronomy department. Gindilis recounts helping to build the RATAN 600 telescope, as well as his work organizing meetings on SETI topics, including the First Soviet-American Conference on Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence in 1971. Gindilis reflects on the philosophical aspects of extraterrestrial communication, such as the question of mutual understanding. He discusses Kardashev’s investigations into CTA-21 and CTA-102 and the importance of the discovery of variability. The interview concludes with Gindilis’ reflections on international collaboration in SETI research and the effects of the Cold War.

Interview with Roald Sagdeev, professor of physics emeritus at the University of Maryland. He recounts his family’s ethnic Tatar heritage, his childhood in Kazan, and his family’s experience during World War II. Sagdeev describes his physics education at Moscow State University, and how he felt regarding the larger issues of physics and Soviet national security – especially during his time in Sarov, which was the equivalent of Los Alamos National Lab for nuclear weapons research. He discusses his work on radiation transport in stellar atmospheres, his subsequent research at the Kurchatov Institute, and his graduate research in controlled nucleosynthesis under the direction of Lev Landau. Sagdeev describes this time as the origins of his expertise in plasma physics and he explains the work he was doing at a classified site in Siberia. He explains how major Cold War events including the Cuban Missile Crisis and nuclear diplomacy affected his career and his moral satisfaction in not contributing to weapons science. Sagdeev discusses his work at the Institute of Physics of High Temperatures, and his developing interests in astrophysics, and he explains his subsequent tenure at the Space Research Institute of the Academy of Sciences, and why the American moon landing demonstrated that Russia had ceded its dominance in the Space Race. He explains why manned space missions were always more politicized than unmanned missions and describes the political value of the Soviet-US Soyuz-Apollo test project as an opportunity for “hand shaking in space.” Sagdeev discusses his experiences advising Gorbachev on disarmament negotiations, and he shares his perspective on SDI and why it was actually the Pershing missile system that contributed more to the Soviet collapse than U.S. defense spending under Reagan. He describes witnessing the end of the Cold War as watching a movie in slow motion, and he explains how he met Susan Eisenhower and the circumstances leading to his move to the United States, where he joined the faculty at the University of Maryland and served as an adviser to NASA. Sagdeev explains his current interests in intergalactic shock waves and he shares his ideas on the newly formed U.S. Space Force and the weaponizing of space. At the end of the interview, Sagdeev shares that if he could start his career all over again, he would focus on neuroscience.

Interview with Vyacheslav Romanov, Research Physical Scientist at the National Energy Technology Laboratory. Romanov recounts his upbringing in the Urals region of the Soviet Union, and he describes his education at a special high school for gifted students in Moscow. He explains the circumstances that led to his enrollment at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology for graduate school and his dawning realization that one can make sense of the world through physics. Romanov discusses his thesis research on the kinetics of light-matter interactions, and he describes his postgraduate work for the Soviet Space Program to develop thin film solar cells to power the International Space Station. He discusses the collapse of science funding after the breakup of the USSR and the opportunity he saw to emigrate to the United States at part of the Symposium on Diplomacy and Global Affairs in Washington, D.C. Romanov explains why he got an MBA from Waynesburg College and how this program put him on the path to U.S. citizenship. After a stint in the materials science industry, he describes his PhD research in physical chemistry and spectroscopy at the University of Pittsburgh, and how this led to his employment at NETL, first as a postdoc and then as a full-time employee. Romanov explains his initial work in geology and data analysis, his subsequent work in optimizing power plant generation, and his current research in reducing the environmental footprint of energy systems with machine learning. He describes the political and economic ramifications of his research, and he explains why carbon-based energy is central to the transition to a de-carbonized future, which, he asserts, will take decades to realize. At the end of the interview, Romanov explains why global efforts to mitigate environmental energy problems must rely on successful cooperation between the U.S. and China. 

Interview with Albert Schwarz, Distinguished Professor of Mathematics Emeritus at UC Davis. Schwarz discusses his current interests in pursuing a geometric approach to quantum theory, and he recounts his family origins in Russia and Eastern Europe and their travails under Stalin’s oppression. He describes his early interests in math and his education at the Ivanovo Pedagogical Institute under the guidance of Professor Efremovich, who guided him in the new field of geometric group theory. Schwarz discusses his graduate research at Moscow University, where he focused on the homology of the space of closed curves and on the topology of the space of Fredholm maps during his postgraduate work. He explains the impact of Polyakov’s and t’Hooft’s work on magnetic monopoles and gauge fields in the 1970s, and he describes his contributions to instanton research. Schwarz recounts his earliest exposure to string theory and his subsequent work on supergravity, and he explains the opportunities and considerations that allowed him to emigrate to the United States. He discusses his initial contacts with Ed Witten and his appointment at the Institute for Advanced Study and his job offer at Davis. Schwarz explains his interest in Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism and his appreciation of the value in relating non-commutative geometry to string theory and M-theory. He describes why a geometric approach to quantum theory de-emphasizes the differences between classical and quantum mechanics. At the end of the interview, Schwarz reflects on some of the life lessons he learned from the difficulties of his youth, how his background gives him a uniquely Russian approach to math and physics, and he explains a duality in string theory where it does not currently explain reality but that ultimately, the “right” physics will arise from it.

In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews Ksenia Blinova, acting assistant division director, Office of Science and Engineering Laboratories, Division of Biomedical Physics at the FDA. Blinova recounts her childhood in Tula, Soviet Union, and she describes the “physics” and “lyrics” educational scheme that splits school children into either a science or humanities focus. She describes her education at Moscow State University, where she became interested in physics and where Victor Yuzhakov and Svetlana Patsaeva were her graduate thesis mentors and where she developed her expertise in fluorescence intensity. Blinova discusses her postdoctoral work at the NIH where she was mentored by Robert Balaban in the Cardiac Energetics Laboratory. She describes the fellowship opportunities stemming from NIH-FDA collaborations that led to her initial work at the FDA, where she learned both biostatistics and took training in regulatory issues. Blinova discusses her subsequent work in electrophysiology and induced pluripotent stem cells, and she describes some of the challenges in ensuring that medical devices are certain to be safe and effective for patients. She describes how physics is applied in her division, particularly in computer modeling, and she describes her interest in developing human cell research as an alternative to animal testing. At the end of the interview, Blinova describes how she plans to remain close to the research as her administrative responsibilities increase, and she explains the promise of her current work on cardiac ablation for patients suffering from atrial fibrillation.

Gamow's involvement with nuclear physics. His later work in astrophysics and his interest in biology. Personal anecdotes about Gamow's childhood in Odessa, student life with Lev Landau and Dmitriy Ivanenko at the University of Leningrad, his fellowship at Göttingen, work in Copenhagen with Niels Bohr, and at University of Cambridge with Ernest Rutherford. Emigration to America in 1934, subsequent work in the United States. Work on penetration barriers, saturation, the beta decay rule, and the nuclear droplet model. Also prominently mentioned are: Hans Albrecht Bethe, Hermann Bondi, Walter Bothe, Maurice de Broglie, James Chadwick, John Cockcroft, Edward Uhler Condon, Francis Crick, Critchfield, Marie Sklodowska Curie, Max Delbrück, Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, Paul Ehrenfest, Enrico Fermi, James Franck, Alexander Friedman, Barbara Gamow, Thomas Gold, Ronald Gurney, Fred Hoyle, Petr Kapitsa, Krutkow, Ernest Orlando Lawrence, Nikolaivitch Luchnik, Chester Nimitz, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Wolfgang Pauli, Léon Rosenfeld, Dimitri Rozhdestwenski, Martin Schwarzschild, Edward Teller, Merle Antony Tuve, James Watson, John Archibald Wheeler, A. M. Wood; Associacion Venezueliana para Promocion de la Sciencia, University of Cambridge Press, Carlsbergfondet Fellowship, George Washington University, Institut de Physique Solvay, Leningradskii gosudarstvennyi universitet imeni A. A. Zhdanova, Moscow M. V. Lomonosov State University, National Academy of Sciences (U.S.), and Odessa I. I. Mechnikov State University.

Family background, early schooling; physics studies at University of Petrograd, Dmitri Rozhdestwensky. Introduction to Niels Bohr's atomic theories; Russian physical sciences tradition; Russian degree system. Stipend at the Optical Institute in Petrograd. Reactions to Werner Heisenberg-Erwin Schrödinger work, 1925-1926; to Göttingen University 1927 and 1928 (Paul Ehrenfest, Paul A.M. Dirac); life in Göttingen. Relationship with Bohr, Bohr's visit to Leningrad, 1934; visit to Copenhagen, 1957; philosophical aspects of physics in Leningrad. Also prominently mentioned are: Maurice de Broglie, Friedman, Goud, Samuel Abraham Goudsmit, Krutkow, Krylow, Liapunov, Hermann Weyl; Kazan V. I. Lenin State University, Leningradskii gosudarstvennyi universitet imeni A. A. Zhdanova, Moscow M. V. Lomonosov State University, Petrozavodsk O. V. Kuusinen State University, Proceedings of the Royal Society, and Universität Göttingen.

Interview topics discussed include: family background; early education; undergraduate studies in astronomy at Moscow State University where he worked with Joseph Shklovsky and with Valerian Krassovsky; aurora research at Laparska Station; Sputnik project; IKI (Space Research Institute), Moskow; observation of Project Starfish in 1962; Galperin's seven satellites of Cosmos 3, 5, 26, 348 and Aureole 1, 2, 3; cooperation with France for Intercosmos satellites; trip to Paris in May 1967; politics resulting in his placement as head of his department by Roald Zinurovich Sagdeev; interaction with Albert Abubakirovich (Alek) Galeev; NASA interest in IKI.

In this interview Alina Eremeeva discusses her career as an historian of astronomy.  Topics discussed include: Boris Vorontsov-Velyaminov; Moscow State University; dialectical materialism; Viktor Amazaspovich Ambartsumian; B. V. Kukarkin; Sternberg State Astronomical Institute; William Herschel.

Part of the Archives for the History of Quantum Physics oral history collection, which includes tapes and transcripts of oral history interviews conducted with circa 100 atomic and quantum physicists. Subjects discuss their family backgrounds, how they became interested in physics, their educations, people who influenced them, their careers including social influences on the conditions of research, and the state of atomic, nuclear, and quantum physics during the period in which they worked. Discussions of scientific matters relate to work that was done between approximately 1900 and 1930, with an emphasis on the discovery and interpretations of quantum mechanics in the 1920s. Also prominently mentioned are: Niels Henrik David Bohr, Arthur Compton, Peter Josef William Debye, Carl Henry Eckart, Paul Ehrenfest, Albert Einstein, Peter Paul Ewald, Folsom, Kasterin, Felix Klein, Hendrik Anthony Kramers, Max Theodor Felix von Laue, Petr Nikolayevich Lebedev, Hendrik Antoon Lorentz, Robert Andrews Millikan, Walther Nernst, John William Nicholson, Max Planck, Adalbert Wojciech Rubinowicz, Erwin Schrödinger, Karl Schwarzschild, Arnold Sommerfeld, Johannes Stark, Timiriazev, Umov, Theodore von Kármán, Wagner, Hermann Weyl; California Institute of Technology, Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden, Universität Leipzig, University of Moscow, and Universität Munich.