Scientists to schoolchildren

"Choose what you like
and don't be afraid of making a mistake"

A year ago, Scientific Secretary of FLNR JINR A.V.Karpov, speaking about the synthesis of superheavy elements in the project "Big Break", suggested the children to write letters with questions to Academician Yu.Ts.Oganessian, not by e-mail, but by hand. And they wrote - more than twenty letters, written in a diligent school hand, lay on the table in the Academician's office. And the winners of the competition "Write a letter to a scientist" were a tenth grader from the Saratov region Daria Dudina and an eighth grader from Kaluga Egor Kuznetsov. They were invited to Dubna. They visited JINR and met Yuri Tsolakovich personally. And he answered the questions asked in the letters, remembering his life and giving advice to the youth.

Yu.Ts.Oganessian began the meeting by presenting commemorative badges with elements of Dubnium and Oganesson to the children and A.V.Krat, a teacher from Podolsk, who participated in the conversation, and instructed how to wear them: not at the same time, while telling that they had recently visited Dubna and met Oganessian.

"You saw our periodic table yesterday - it is the largest in Europe, Asia and America, only there is a larger one in Australia," Yuri Tsolakovich began to answer the first question. "Ours is clearly visible from the other side of the Volga, and unlike other tables, it is made with a scientific approach, with color highlighting, as is done in chemical atlases. So you can give lectures on the banks of the Volga or right in it. And JINR Director Grigory Vladimirovich Trubnikov believes that instead of my address, elements can be indicated: Moscow region - Muscovium, Dubna - Dubnium, Flerova Street - Flerovium, Yu.Ts.Oganesyan - Oganesson."

When did you decide on a profession?

"Very early, but it was neither physics nor chemistry. It was drawing. The artist, who had been evacuated from besieged Leningrad and lived next to us in Yerevan, appreciated my abilities and began to teach me, we made illustrations for "The Inspector General". It was the moment of choosing a profession. But my father opposed me leaving high school and going into art. And I graduated from school with a medal and entered the institute. Life is such a complicated thing, everything can change, new hobbies can appear."

What is your favorite city?

"The one where I was born - Rostov-on-Don. I have loved him since childhood."

What kind of pupil were you, did you read a lot?

"A little. I drew more than I read."

Have you had fateful meetings?

"There were, yet, not at school age, but when I had already graduated from the institute and came to work. Then I met the people whose books I had studied, communicated with them. Now let's answer the questions of Daria Dudina, she gave me eight questions.

There is such an opposition - physics and lyrics ...

"You know, I'm totally against it. They are not completely opposite, on the contrary. When we arranged parties as students, we invited girls not from technical universities, but from humanitarian ones, we lacked lyrics. Each person wants to be versatile and there was no such separation before. Here we can recall Leonardo do Vinci, a brilliant designer and engineer-inventor, and also a brilliant artist. Human values are connected either with how we cognize nature, the world around us, or with how we invent...

How do you feel about today's young generation?

"Today's young generation is the same as the previous one and the preceding one. Everything is changing fast."

How to succeed?

"I have no recipes, I always feel a lack of time."

If you were offered to work out a unique tourist route in Russia, where would you go?

"My father asked me: you have seen half the world, but have you been to Baikal? I said that I had never been there. So you haven't seen the world. I went to Baikal - for sure, I had never seen such beauty anywhere. And once I flew from Moscow to Delhi and our route ran over Baikal. The weather was clear and the lake, reflecting the sunlight, looked like mercury spilled between the mountains. And when the plane was exactly above it and the sun glare did not interfere, we saw the kilometer depth of Baikal, and it was amazing!.."

Which of your awards is the most significant for you?

"For me, the biggest award is the Big Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences named after M.V.Lomonosov that I was awarded in 2017.

You write: the profession of a scientist is a titanic work...

"I will say this: my profession is a scientist and there is a scientist cat. Now the questions of Egor Kuznetsov."

What would you name the new chemical element?

"I would name it in honor of the remarkable physicist Georgy Gamov. He was a graduate of Leningrad University, then went to Paris, then to the USA, became a professor. He owns absolutely fantastic discoveries. They say that he should have been awarded the Nobel Prize three times but has never been awarded. He wrote a book that is very popular. It has recently been translated into Russian - "The Adventures of Mr.Tompkins." It was written not for physicists, but for people interested in science and, in particular, the microcosm."

"What emotions did I feel when I discovered the 118th element? No emotions, imagine that for 50 years everyone, including us, has been trying to test the theory of whether there is an island of stability or not. This is a powerful test of the correctness of the description of the world. Nobody has succeeded for a long time. I have said that it is highly likely that we will not succeed either, but let's make one more attempt, but in such a way that our grandchildren will make the next one. And we have been preparing for ten years. And when I found a way to do it, the rest was already a matter of technology - to synthesize one element, the second, the third, the sixth ... It was a tremendous satisfaction - it means that the theory is correct. The 118th element itself was discovered in 2004 and the name was given to it 12 years later.

How long has it been synthesized?

"The 118th element was the heaviest, it was synthesized the longest - one atom per month, we got five atoms. Have you seen our new accelerator? This so-called factory will produce 100 times more - 500 atoms. Such a small effect - one atom per month - makes one look for a way out, although the Japanese did not look for it: they synthesized three atoms of the 113th element for 12 years.

What eminent scientists have I worked with? If I start listing now, it will be a long list. Georgy Nikolaevich Flerov was 20 years older than me. There were many outstanding people in that generation. They had been young even before the war, some had died at the front. Flerov discovered the phenomenon of spontaneous nuclear fission in 1940 and in 1941 he went to the front.

Who have I had the most fun with? With the one who I have worked with for a long time. With Georgy Nikolaevich Flerov for more than thirty years.

Do I like teaching? It's hard for me to answer. I was asked to give a course on "Superheavy Elements" at a special lecture hall in Sarov for young specialists who had just graduated from the institute. They were selected from all over Russia 20 people. It was very interesting for me: sensible fellows, vigorously listened, asked questions. Then I was invited to America. The audience consisted of students from different universities in America. I was lecturing in complete silence. I was confused, wasn't it clear? I asked: maybe my English was not good enough? No, no, everything was fine. And the professors who were present, asked questions, but I read for young people and they were embarrassed to ask.

Which country is Russia's competitor in nuclear physics? We have four competitors: USA, France, Germany and Japan. In all these countries there are large national laboratories that are engaged in the synthesis of elements. We cooperated with them. We produced superheavy elements together with the Americans: experiments were carried out on our accelerator and they prepared some equipment, we worked together, so there are also English names for the elements."

Questions from another winner of the competition, Edoardo La Malfa (Italy), were asked online by S.V.Chubakova.

When will the next element be synthesized?

"It will definitely not be the way it was, because the reaction that allowed to synthesize all these elements is not good. We should take heavier titanium-50 or chromium-54 instead of calcium-48. This reaction is less efficient than the previous one, but we have a new facility - the Superheavy Element Factory that potentially has a factor of 100. We must apply this factor to a new task where the produced elements are worse. Therefore, there will be only wrong answer to your question. And we will start to focus on this synthesis this year. Call us next year and we will let you know how things are.

If I succeed to visit Russia in the coming years, can I visit your laboratory?

"Of course, we will be very happy, come!"

Thanks for the invitation. What should I start studying in order to work on superheavy synthesis? I am 15 years old now.

"At the age of 15 one does not work on superheavy synthesis. One has to finish school firstly, then enter the university and study for at least four years in order to master higher mathematics, physics, chemistry and without such preparation it is impossible to deal with this or any other task. You need to know electronics, computer technology, computational mathematics and more. If you have a desire to practice in our laboratory, please."

Thank you very much for the invitation, professor, and I'm really grateful to you for your answers to my questions.

Russian schoolchildren also expressed their feelings.

"Yuri Tsolakovich, you are an amazing person!" Daria Dudina was very emotional. "You are ahead of your time, driving progress. I confess honestly, when I received a letter from you, I cried. I am still very worried, I have been waiting for this meeting for a whole year and I cannot believe that I have met you. Thank you for everything you do, I want to wish you good health and new achievements."

"It's a great honor to see you," said Yegor Kuznetsov, "it's like a meeting with Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky. And here is another, probably stupid question: why was the broadcast removed from the periodic table?"

"A good question and in fact a very deep one," Yu. Ts. Oganessian noted. "Mendeleev, having arranged the 64 elements known in those times in order of increasing mass, noticed that the chemical properties were repeated every eight elements. So they could be collected in rows, from the most active in the first row to the most inert in the last one. But if a pattern is traced, then these are not the bricks of the universe, we must look deeper. The atom itself has a complex structure - this is Mendeleev's conclusion... Mendeleev's genius lies in the fact that he was the first to say that the atom was not a brick, he opened the gates to this microworld, the world of nuclei and electrons, quantum mechanics. As to Mendeleev, the table may change, but the Periodic Law is preserved."

Yu.Ts.Oganessian showed the schoolchildren and the parents who joined them the memorial office of G.N.Flerov: "We left it as if he had just left - here is his wand, dressing gown. Here is the board - he wrote it on top, I wrote it on the bottom." And he gave the schoolchildren the last parting word: "The main thing is to choose what you like and not to be afraid of making a mistake. If you don't like it - change it and move on, no tragedy, I say this on purpose in presence of your parents."

"Yuri Tsolakovich explains very clearly," Yegor added his opinion. "I would like to learn from him. I think of choosing a specialty related to physics and chemistry, I would like to work at JINR."

As a memory of the meeting, the schoolchildren from Russia and Italy will have the last version of the Periodic Table autographed by the person who made such a significant contribution to its expansion and understanding.

Olga Tarantina,
photo by Elena Puzynina