Dad was always devoted to science and truth, and to those people who stood up for them. He also couldn’t stand pseudo-scientists, and opposed them with vigor. Some topics come to mind.
Clarity of Purpose
Whatever dad did was obviously good, needed, and also grand. He was motivated by goals which are large, challenging, and useful for the humankind, while also uplifting the spirit. His scientific pursuits were about electric propulsion, space flight to the stars, and thermonuclear fusion, the Sun on Earth, clean, renewable energy for humanity. His efforts to learn the fate of the Soviet prisoners of war resonate with the whole generation of those whose parents didn’t come back from that war. His efforts to commemorate the great scientists who taught the next generations are key to continuity in science. When you are next to such a man, you want to strive for goals which are as lofty, ambitious, and at the same time clear, necessary, and inspiring. First and foremost, my dad inspired -- enthusiasm for science, discovery, storytelling, humor, and communication.
Pupularization of Science and Defense of Scientific Rigor
Commemorating Perelman
Isidor Perelman was a Soviet popularizer of science. Millions of school kids grew up reading his books such as “Popular Physics” (Занимательная Физика). He died in Leningrad during the Siege in the WWII, in 1941, not evacuated. I also read Popular Physics and followed its experiments, such as preserving soap bubbles intact in a bottle. My dad was inspired by Perelman’s books when he was a kid himself; and that’s why he made sure we had those books when we grew up.
Perelman’s life and death in blockade Leningrad resonated with my dad. When we visited the city in 2007, he started work to commemorate Perelman -- with a street named after him, and a memorial plaque, or a statue. He was always so passionate and convincing about it, that it started moving.
Debunking Fomenko
Another case involves Fomenko -- an inventor of the “New Chronology,” purporting to compress the actual history into imaginary cycles, e.g. “explaining” that Egyptian pharaohs and mediaeval kings were the same. Fomenko alluded to different disciplines, e.g. used Ptolemy’s star catalog Almagest and references to solar eclipses in historical to chronicles to invalidate those very chronicles. He also used old Russian bark writings and transliteration of geographical names into Russian to argue, through word similarity, that various places usually considered different are actually the same, etc. Fomenko had friends in the high places, lacking scientific education and glad to support the implication that “all science is wrong anyways, so you don’t need to know it.“ There was a risk that Fomenko’s theories would make their way into schools! My dad, as a space scientist and educator, opposed such abuse of astronomy, and was instrumental in organizing multidisciplinary conferences, where ”New Chronology” was thoroughly debunked -- by the leading astronomers, linguists, and historians. The proceedings are published as trade books and turned the tide of pseudo-science. With his sense of humor and irony, in addition to the logical debunking, dad contributed epigrams in the style of Pushkin, in a long-standing Russian literary and scholarly tradition, making fun of the fallacies at hand.
Dad’s sense of humor was legendary, and coupled with an ability to talk to any person, it made him an extremely effective and popular communicator. We loved taking trains, chugging their ways for days across Russia -- to places such as Siberia, where his mother, my grandmother, Maria has lived, to Crimea. We met people of all walks of life -- farmers and workers, village teachers, administrators, military officers -- and dad could connect to everybody, finding common topics about their home towns, their jobs, interests, cultural affinities, their ethnic backgrounds and histories of their peoples, for Soviet Union and Russia are multi-ethnic countries.
Establishing Tsiolkovsky’s Priority in Electric Propulsion
Dad was a patriot of his country, and knew its history very well on several levels -- politically, culturally, and the history of science and technology. He studied the works and philosophy of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the Russian thinker and pioneer of space travel. When he learned that an encyclopedia of space travel is being prepared in the US, rooting the idea of electric propulsion with Goddard, the US rocket pioneer, dad
History and the Arts
Rafael and Bellini
Dad loved art, and Italians were his favorites. When a student in Moscow in the 1940s and 1950s, he went to Bolshoi, and loved Bellini operas all his life. Norma was his favorite, and Cavatina from Norma he played to students and friends. One of the first things I did when in the US is to send back all Bellini operats in all possible performances, including rare ones, I could lay my hands on. Among the artists, Rafael’s Madonna was a symbol for him, and the history surrounding it -- when it were saved in Dresden and taken to Russia, where, before return, it was shown, and dad saw it in his youth. He liked the story about Dostoyevsky asking for a chair and standing on it the whole day, looking at the Madonna, being at her eye level. For dad, she was an epitome of kindness, and motherly love.
For my dad 70th birthday, I invited him along on the Italy segment of my big Eurail tour, and in Rome, we went Pantheon, where Rafael is buried. We planned to go to Bellini’s resting place in Sicily, but didn’t get a chance to do it together.
Ancient Rome and Greece
A common interest of ours was ancient Greece and Rome. When near Salreno, we visited Paestum, and from Napoli, went to Pompeii. Dad kept a picture of Paestum framed in our Moscow apartment. From our immense library, I developed an affinity to Cicero, and later collected everything in print and out of print on the subject (including my New Hampshire license plate, forming a complete summary with the state’s motto, “Live Free or Die.”)
Dad used to tell me stories when I was young, and I liked to tell him stoties when he was old. I called him almost every day, telling him of the new books, new stories, new science and arts. One day, when we were in a remote national park at the Baltic Sea, going through a dune forest towards the shore, I was telling him about Cicero’s friendship and correspondence with Atticus, and dad asked: “What would you do if Atticus came out of the woods, what would you ask him?” That immediately makes you think differently about what you know. He saw the world as here and now and at the same time could weave all kinds of knowledge and make it come alive -- and people loved him for it. On a Russian student site, where various professors are ranked, there’s a note about him: “A great teacher and a great man.”
Teaching
Dad’s career as a teacher was no less important for him than his research. As a professor in MEPhI he spent enormous amount of time and effort to impart his enthusiasm for science, discovery, logic and common sense -- what makes a real physicist. At the same time, he expanded his students’ horizons, sharing his polymath interests, some of which are mentioned above.