The President Reevaluates Scientists
// Six receive reformed State Prize
Encouragement
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an order on Monday on the awarding of the State Prize of the Russian Federation for 2004 for science and technology. Beginning with that year, the number of recipients of the prize will be sharply reduced, but its size will be comparable with the Nobel Prize. There were six recipients of the prize in its new form, three members of the military aerospace forces, husband and wife archeologists from Novosibirsk and a St. Petersburg mathematician. The president will give them their prizes at the Kremlin on June 12 as part of the celebration of Russia Day.
The Main Science Prize of Russia
Putin has signed the order with the names of the prize winners, who were preliminarily confirmed in a closed session of the president's council on science, technology and education on May 19. In 2004, the amount of the prize was drastically altered. Before, a prize of 300,000 rubles was given to several dozen people and the prizes were, as a rule, not given to people, but to research groups of eight to ten people. Nor for a “prominent contribution to the development of national and world science,” three prizes of 5 million rubles (about $180,000) each will be given, which is monetarily comparable to the Nobel Prize.
Now the State Prize differs from the Nobel Prize only in two details. First, the candidates must be Russian citizens (citizenship has no meaning for the Nobel Prize; Russian writer Ivan Bunin had no citizenship at all when he won the Nobel Prize). Second, the State Prize can be awarded posthumously (only the living are awarded the Nobel Prize; a posthumous prize will be awarded only if the candidate dies between January 10 and December 10 of the same year, that is, the time between the finalization of the candidates by the prize committee and the presentation of the award by the king of Sweden).
The Military Space Program Didn't Head for the Hills for Nothing
Under the Monday presidential order, Maj. Gen. Alexander Kvasnikov, head of the military aerospace staff and first deputy commander of the Russian military aerospace program, was named a State Prize winner for science and technology, as were Valery Kolinko, Candidate of Science and head of the special KB-4 Scientific and Technological Center at the federal scientific production center OAO Krasnogorsky Mechanical Plant, and Arkady Vereshkin, Candidate of Technical Sciences and head of Scientific and Technological Center No. 57 of the Scientific Research Center for Television. They will receive the prize for the establishing the Window optical-electronic space control complex located on Mt. Sanglok near Nurek, Tajikistan, military unit 52168 (object 7680) of the Russian military aerospace force.
It is the only Window complex in Russia now and it delivers timely information about conditions in space and about satellites (mostly foreign ones), including their functions and conditions up to an elevation of 40,000 km. This is not the first prize the aerospace force has received. Gen. Col. Vladimir Popovkin, commander of the aerospace force, was awarded the administration prize for science and technology in 2004, as were Maj. Gen. Alexander Lopatin, deputy commander of the aerospace force; Lieut. Gen. Alexander Kovalev, head of Mozhaisky Military Aerospace Academy in St. Petersburg, and Lieut. Gen. Leonid Baranov, head of the cosmodrome in Baikonur.
Secret Mathematics
Academic-Secretary Lyudvig Faddeev works at the Eiler International Mathematics Institute in St. Petersburg and in the presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. He is the head of the mathematics division, one of the nine divisions of the Academy of Sciences. In the presidential order, his contribution is given the vague definition of “development of national and world science.” Therefore, Kommersant turned to the prize winner himself for elucidation. “I have various prizes,” he explained. “But this one is exceptional. It is very hard to say in simple understandable language what I received this prize for. You have heard of names like Einstein and Heisenberg? I continued their research from the mathematical point of view. And the prize was given to me, as they do in Hollywood, for life achievement. I am a good scientist. I already have two State Prizes for specific works. I have a lot of everything in general.”
Faddeev's colleague in the presidium of the Academy of Science, physicist and head of the division of energy and machine building Vladimir Fortov, also told Kommersant why Faddeev was awarded the prize. Faddeev's mathematical constructs are very important for the work being performed in Fortov's division. “Lyudvig Faddeev has always very keenly felt the physical applications of mathematics and made a prominent practical contribution to all aspects of mathematical physics… That's the theory of turbulence, which is important for the design of submarines and torpedoes, and the so-called many-body problem. It is important to solve this problem correctly when there are various targets moving on different trajectories in a space. And, of course, there is the theory of the retention of bodies in magnetic fields, without which the development of new sources of energy such as tokamaks would be impossible,” Fortov explained, speaking to Kommersant from a test range.
Advances in Archeology
The prize was awarded to archeologists Vyacheslav Molodin, deputy chairman of the Siberian Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Natalya Polosmak, Doctor of Historical Sciences and member of the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography, for specific work, “discovery and research of the unique complexes of the Pazyrsky Culture of the fourth and third centuries B.C. on the territory of Gorny Altai.”
The most spectacular discovery of the scientific expedition to Gorny Altai was the Princess of Ukok, a mummified woman found in the permafrost. Her discovery last year almost caused a riot in the Republic of Altai. Gorny Altai residents gathered in the district center of Kosh-Agach on April 22, 2004, when then presidential representative for the Siberian Federal District Leonid Drachevsky was visiting, and demanded that the “princess” be returned to her grave. Otherwise, they stated, “the angry spirits of the mountains will not stop the earthquakes that have been going on for two years already.”
Before his arrival in Kosh-Agach, Drachevsky had met with scientists and acquainted himself with the discovery. Equipped with that knowledge, he was able to defuse the situation within a few hours. He explained to local residents that, according to the scientists, the princess was not Altai, but a Nenets, one of those whom the ancestors of the current residents had forced out of Altai to Yamal. And in any casae, when the scientists are finished with their research, she will be returned to the Altai. Hearing this, the crowd dispersed.
Molodin, who was initially not inclined to be cooperative with the presidential representative, but later helped him calm the republic, told Kommersant that “it is very pleasant to know that my wife and I will receive the State Prize… We haven't thought about how to spend the money yet. My wife will decide. Women know how to do that.” The learned couple will not celebrate long. Molodin said that “we will receive it at the Kremlin, then got to the Barabinsky steppe for new digging.”
Alexey Sobolev, St. Petersburg; Dmitry Serdtsev, Novosibirsk; Ivan Safronov, Sergey Petukhov
All the Article in Russian as of June 07, 2005
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