"It would have been better without the Nobel Prize." Physicist Mikhail Katsnelson about discoveries

I made a reservation in advance: what he does is understood by hardly a few hundred people in the world. On our own behalf, we add that he is also a real knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion. And the winner of the Lenin Komsomol Prize. Well, what do you think Mikhail Katsnelson does? Well, graphene of course!

Mikhail Katsnelson is a physicist, he comes from Magnitogorsk, where he studied at school. And in Chelyabinsk, we crossed paths at the Bright Past award ceremony (we recall that it is awarded to our famous fellow countrymen who work in a foreign land).

So, to discuss graphene at the philistine level with a professor, of course, is not our business. For those not in the know, graphene is, so to speak, a two-dimensional material. Carbon becomes graphene when it is "smeared" with a layer exactly one atom thick. And then the material exhibits many amazing properties that are not characteristic of carbon at all. It is planned to produce subminiature electronic components from graphene. That's it, you will never see the word graphene again in this interview!

And we talked about the activities of Katsnelson, the popularizer of science. In co-authorship with Valentin Irkhin, our interlocutor wrote a book surprisingly unlike a physics textbook: “Statutes of heaven. 16 chapters on science and faith. In the "Statutes" physicists of the "top level", so to speak, are trying to reconcile the conceptual apparatus of religions and natural sciences. What is a "miracle" from the point of view of a scientist-observer? Do not the laws of nature and religious laws contradict each other? Does the Gospel deny the evolutionary process? The book is in the public domain, you can first run through your eyes.

Mikhail Iosifovich, tell me, how did you find time in your schedule to write a book that is unlikely to bring dividends, material benefits? Or bring?

No, of course ... The story is like this. It was 2000 or 2001, when I was in Yekaterinburg. In 1998, my teacher, a very important person for me, academician Sergei Vasilievich Valtsovsky, died, and after him the manuscript of the book “Modern natural-scientific picture of the world”, a kind of textbook on natural science for the humanities, remained. Relatives of Sergei Vasilyevich turned to me and my colleague Valentin Irkhin with a request to complete the book, the section on the relationship between natural science and religion, art remained unfinished there ... Of course, I was terribly surprised, because I considered and still consider myself a very poorly educated person in the humanities. But Valya Irkhin convinced me: let's try.

We went through an insane amount of books, finished a chapter, and while we were doing it, we got involved and decided to write a whole book.

Now I wouldn't have time for it! It’s not that I didn’t receive any dividends, but our colleagues were suspicious of our activities, this was not very encouraged. Then, in the early 2000s, it was difficult to do science in Russia, and then I thought that since I could not do scientific work at the proper level, then I would be engaged in popularization and teaching. Now I can’t write anything like that, I don’t have time, but then I was doing it with great enthusiasm.

The Statutes of Heaven cites so many different sources, from the Bible and other religious texts to modern science fiction, Ursula Le Guin, for example. Are you in charge of fantasy?

Valya Irkhin is a completely unique specialist. He is a physicist by profession, but he is well versed in the canonical texts of various religions. You can always get advice from him on any translation of the Bible into any language of any era. He also studied Indian texts, and a variety of ... here he was preparing a selection of quotations from canonical texts. And science fiction, Vysotsky's songs and so on - I prepared it. This is how the text was written together, I wrote more purely literary.

You received reviews on the book: “What do these physicists allow themselves?! How can they judge such things? Maybe crazy people wrote to you?

No, crazy people didn't write. But fellow physicists reacted with great suspicion. I haven't heard any serious comments from the humanists, but some have looked closely at our writings even, perhaps, in more detail than they deserve. In particular, Professor Miroshnikov (editor's note Yuri Ivanovich Miroshnikov - at that time the head of the Department of Philosophy of the Institute of Philosophy and Law of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences) wrote two in-depth reviews and invited us to participate in collections of scientific works of his department. And I even read a few lectures for graduate students on the philosophy of science. And on the contrary, it seemed to someone that it was all lightweight, but people are delicate, these reviews did not reach me.

My eye caught on the chapter "Miracle". I understand what you, as a scientist, mean by this word: very unlikely events. Do you believe in real miracles?

The difficult question is how to relate to miracles. Seven billion people live on Earth, every day there are tens and hundreds of events. Is it a miracle that during the rain a single drop falls exactly on the head of some nail sticking out of the fence? Well, there are a lot of drops, some will definitely hit! You can go deeper. In particular, the famous psychologist Jung developed the concept of synchronicity, as opposed to causality. The vast majority of my colleagues feel badly about such ideas, because miracles do not fit into the modern picture of the world. For a physicist, this is meaningless, I don’t know what to do with it. But as a person… many events can be interpreted as miracles. Is it necessary?

What impressed you the most in the world of science, engineering, technology in 2017?

There is such an anecdote that the Chukchi is not a reader, the Chukchi is a writer! I'm in this sense absorbed in my own work, so I'm biased here. There are some tastes, favorite topics ... It's hard to look impartially. But in particular, I had several visits, several conversations, after which I reconsidered my attitude towards quantum computers. Now it seems to me that there is something serious behind this.

Note. Ed: A quantum computer is a hypothetical device that uses a fundamentally different logic of calculations, different from modern computers, based on the postulates of quantum physics. It will (theoretically) perform some tasks trillions of times faster than current supercomputers.

What does the title of a Dutch knight oblige? Or maybe there are some benefits, well, can you skip the line at a store or pharmacy?

No, there are no benefits! But on solemn occasions it is necessary to wear an order bar. I may be taking chivalry too seriously. I am a Russian physicist, a citizen of Russia, but at the same time I am a member of the European Academy, here is the badge. And in this capacity, I believe it is a duty that I have taken upon myself: to contribute to the improvement of relations between Russia and Europe, especially in the field of scientific cooperation. Although I am not a diplomat, not a politician, to the best of my ability. Sometimes Dutch newspapers interview me, it's good: here, a Russian physicist, you can talk with him about this and that.

What do you answer when they ask why you don't live in Russia?

You see, unfortunately, I cannot work at the right level in my homeland. I visit Russia constantly, I work with the Ural Federal University, and not on paper, but really, we are working on it. As a physicist, I flourished in the Netherlands. Of course, it's a pity, but the work keeps me going. What will I do there when I retire? I don't know yet.

Deputy Artistic Director, Producer

After graduating from the Gnessin Institute in 1976, he entered one of the best orchestras in the world - the Grand Symphony Orchestra of the USSR State Radio and Television, later BSO. P.I. Tchaikovsky, which has been led by the outstanding Russian conductor Vladimir Fedoseev for 40 years.

During 15 years of work in the BSO, he met with famous musicians and journalists, which helped in his further work as a producer, which he has been doing for the last 25 years.

Another violinist...

Worked with V. I. Fedoseev for almost 20 years as a violinist, director, producer

Rudolf Barshai, after a long absence, conducted in Russia, the producer was M. Katsnelson.

From 1991 to 1994 he worked in the Russian National Orchestra - the first private Russian orchestra - under the direction of Mikhail Pletnev, who made a brilliant career as a pianist and conductor.

Only the best soloists played with the Pletnev Orchestra (Mikhail Pletnev and Viktor Tretyakov)

On the left M. Katsnelson with his wife Elena, on the right journalist, TV presenter S. Nikolaevich with the first producer of RNO T. Sukhacheva, in the center is a young American conductor

In this orchestra, M. Katsnelson ceased to be a violinist and became the director of this group. The orchestra had just been created, its connections in the artistic and journalistic worlds were in demand, and its administrative and production activities began. Working in a private orchestra taught me to cooperate with sponsors and investors. It was at RNO that he gained invaluable experience working with banks and large companies willing to invest in creative projects.

Now in the hands is not a violin, but documents

With Austrian violinist Yulian Rakhlin at the Violinist for All Seasons festival

With Yury Bashmet in the artistic room of the Great Hall of the Conservatory after the premiere of the concerto for viola, cello and chamber orchestra by Alexei Rybnikov

With Nikolai Petrov. At his festival "Kremlin Musical" was the director
Zuben Metta with his wife, meeting at Sheremetyevo Airport
Ekaterina Mechetina is the first performer of works by A. Rybnikov: Concerto Grosso No. 1,2 and Piano Sonatas No. one

This experience helped him when he worked for several years with Boris Belenky on the Crystal Turandot project, Alexander Krauter at the Krauterkontsert artistic agency, and Nikolai Petrov, People's Artist of the USSR, at the Musical Kremlin international festival. In these projects, he managed to attract not only finances, but also designers, administrators, many musicians and artists with whom he had collaborated before.

In 2004, Katsnelson created the Concert City artistic agency and held several major projects, including the international festival dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the outstanding violinist Yulian Sitkovetsky "Violinist for All Seasons", to which world stars were invited: Yulian Rakhlin ( violin, Austria), Jeannine Jensen (violin, Holland), Alena Baeva (violin, Russia), Liana Isakadze (violin, Georgia), Alexander Rudin (cello, Russia), Bella Davidovich (piano, USA), Dmitry Sitkovetsky (conductor, violin, UK).

At the Crowtherconcert agency, he had the opportunity to meet and collaborate with such personalities as James Levine, artistic director of the Metropolitan Opera, Zuben Metta - chief conductor of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Kathleen Battle - a brilliant soprano of the Metropolitan Opera, Evgeny Kisin - pianist of the world and of course collaborate with the Chereshnevy Les festival and its founder Mikhail Kusnirovich, who created the most creative Moscow art project.

At the Cherry Forest festival, his collaboration with Alexei Rybnikov began. The premiere of Symphony No. 5 "Resurrection of the Dead" under the baton of conductor Teodor Currentzis, later it was possible to release a disc at the Melodiya company with a video recording of this concert. And a concert in the hall. Tchaikovsky and the DVD were successful with the public and critics, and he received an offer from Alexei Rybnikov to start working on his symphonic projects as a producer. In recent years, several significant concerts, audio and video recordings with the music of Alexei Rybnikov have been held in the best halls of Moscow and with the best conductors and soloists: conductors Valery Gergiev, Vladimir Fedoseev, Alexander Sladkovsky, Mark Gorenstein, soloists - Yuri Bashmet, Alexander Knyazev, Alena Baeva , Ekaterina Mechetina, Boris Andrianov, and many others.

Kathleen Battle - star of the Metropolitan Opera

With Evgeny Kissin after a triumphant concert

With Maya Plisetskaya at R. Shchedrin's Self-Portrait festival dedicated to the composer's 70th birthday

Since 2008, he began working with the Alexei Rybnikov Theater and over the years he managed to organize tours of the theater to Israel, the Baltic States, Finland, the USA and Canada, to hold several Rybnikov’s author’s concerts with music for theater and cinema (conductor Sergey Skripka), as well as two anniversary concerts in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory with the participation of the State Academic Symphony Orchestra. Svetlanov and the Moscow Symphony Orchestra "Russian Philharmonic".

With Austrian conductor and pianist Justus Franz and cellist Alexander Knyazev, the first performer of the Rybnikov Concerto

With Vladimir Spivakov at the Cherry Wood Festival

With Mstislav Rostropovich and Timpanist Valery Polivanov at the Self-portrait Festival dedicated to the 70th anniversary of R. Shchedrin

Thanks to a long-standing contact with the Melodiya company, M. Katsnelson managed to release several discs with Rybnikov's compositions: Concerto Grosso No. 1 "Blue Bird" and Concerto Grosso No. 2 Northern Sphinx, Symphony No. 5 "Resurrection of the Dead", cello concerto (soloist - Alexander Knyazev, conductor - Alexander Sladkovsky), an anthology of piano music by Soviet composers, as well as remakes of two famous rock operas "Juno and Avos" and "The Star and Death of Joaquin Murieta » on vinyl discs.

With Alexander Sladkovsky, who made a brilliant career as a conductor and artistic director

With pianist Irina Schnittke at a concert by Evgeny Kissin

With Zoya Boguslavskaya at the presentation of the Triumph Prize to Alexei Rybnikov

Since 2017, M.N. Katsnelson has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Russian Authors' Society (Chairman - Krichevsky Andrey Borisovich).

1976-1991 - The Big Symphony Orchestra of the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, later the BSO im. P.I. Tchaikovsky (artistic director, People's Artist of the USSR - Vladimir Fedoseev) - artist of the orchestra

1991-1994 - Russian National Orchestra (artistic director, People's Artist of the Russian Federation - Mikhail Pletnev) - orchestra artist, director

1994-1996 - "Muses of Freedom" - "Crystal Turandot" (theatrical award, artistic director - Boris Belenky) - executive director

1994-1999 - BSO im. Tchaikovsky (artistic director, People's Artist of the USSR - Vladimir Fedoseev) - director

1999-2001 - State Symphony Orchestra "Young Russia" (artistic director, People's Artist of the Russian Federation - Mark Gorenstein) - director

2002-2004 - Krauterconcert (General Director - Alexander Krauter) - producer

2004-2006 - Musical Kremlin - International Festival (Artistic Director, People's Artist of the USSR - Nikolai Petrov) - Director

2006 to present Workshop under the direction of Alexey Rybnikov, Alexey Rybnikov Theater - Deputy Artistic Director, Producer

This email address is being protected from spambots. You must have JavaScript enabled to view.

Received a native of Russia Mikhail Katsnelson. The report stated that Katznelson received the award for "using ideas from particle physics in the study of graphene." What exactly these ideas were and how they were used, Mikhail Katsnelson himself told Lente.ru.

Lenta.ru: This year you received the Spinoza Prize. As follows from the official message, for work on graphene. Tell us more about them.

First of all, I will say that before the start of all this activity in 2004, I was very far from graphene. More precisely, I was engaged in magnetism, the physics of strongly correlated systems (any kind of superconductivity). No nanotubes, quantum Hall effect and other sections characteristic of a graphene specialist. However, in 2004 I am here in Nijmegen ( At that time, Mikhail Katsnelson already lived in the Netherlands - approx. "Tapes.ru"), met with Andrey Geim and Kostya Novoselov. Kostya was a graduate student here, just defending his dissertation, and Andrei was present as co-supervisor of the work. I wanted to talk to him about Kostya's dissertation - it was on magnetism, a topic that was close to me at that time. Andrei almost immediately told me that they no longer deal with this topic, and began to ask some questions that were related to graphene - about Dirac electrons in a magnetic field. Somehow, word for word, I was involved in this activity.

At first, I must admit, I didn’t take it very seriously. And then it turned out that I have been doing this for eight years - now graphene activity makes up 70 percent of all my work. Perhaps the fact that I came from another area played into my hands, made it possible to look at many issues from a slightly different angle from which people with the right, so to speak, background looked. At that time, it was known that the current carriers in graphene are (terminology) massless Dirac fermions. In a simple way, they resemble particles that are accelerated to speeds of the order of the speed of light. That is, these same fermions are described by equations similar to the equations of such relativistic particles in accelerators, with the only difference that the role of the speed of light is played by a value that is 300 times less than this speed. This is, if you like, a model of the Universe, in which the world constants are different, and the laws of physics, in general, are the same.

The Spinoza Prize, named after the Dutch philosopher Benedict Spinoza, was organized by the Netherlands Organization for Basic Scientific Research (NWO) in 1995. This is the highest scientific award in the Netherlands. It is awarded to Dutch scientists who are leaders in science. There is no clear list of scientific fields considered by the commission - the decision on the award is made for each nominated scientist separately. The winners receive a bronze statue of Spinoza and also share 2.5 million euros, which they can spend on further scientific research.

It turned out that such a view from the side of relativistic quantum mechanics (the theory of quantum objects, which also obey the theory of relativity) turned out to be very fruitful. Apparently, our most famous work on the theory of graphene is what we called Klein tunneling (), and, as far as I understand, it was especially noted in the award.

That's what she's talking about. In quantum mechanics there is such a phenomenon - tunneling. It is very important because it determines many useful phenomena: some types of nuclear decay, radioactivity, effects in semiconductor electronics. The essence of the phenomenon is as follows: quantum particles, unlike classical ones, can pass through potential barriers with some probability. That is, if you put a wall, then the particle can seep through it. There is a subtlety here: it is believed that quantum mechanics works for everything small, and classical mechanics for everything big, so when the barrier becomes high and wide, then quantum mechanics should coincide with classical. This means that there will be no tunneling. But for ultrarelativistic particles, for all sorts of very deep and interesting reasons, the situation is different: they pass through the barrier no matter how high and wide it is. This is such a very general and very interesting property, which we called Klein tunneling, because it is somehow related to the so-called Klein paradox in quantum mechanics (I certainly won’t explain this right now). Over time, it turned out that this is a very important thing. Three years later, this effect was experimentally confirmed. I was, of course, over the head happy: this is the highest joy for a theoretician - to correctly predict something. It's not often that it succeeds.

And who confirmed?

The first was Philip Kim's group at Columbia University in New York (by the way, they were Andrey and Kostya's main competitors in graphene matters). Now this, probably, has already been confirmed in dozens of works. But the main charm of this work is that it explained why graphene is interesting in principle.

The fact is that in graphene, as in semiconductors, there are holes and there are electrons. In this case, the material is easy to switch from one conductivity to another - for example, to switch from hole conductivity (when the main charge carriers are positively charged holes) to electronic and vice versa. To do this, it is enough, say, to apply an external electrical voltage, in English called gate voltage, to a graphene sheet. At the same time, under normal conditions, graphene always contains internal inhomogeneities, that is, there are regions with electronic conductivity and there are regions with hole conductivity - such electron and hole pools (). Why does this occur? This is due, for example, to the fact that graphene is two-dimensional, and any two-dimensional systems experience strong fluctuations at any finite temperature. So, if there were no Klein tunneling, which allows electrons to pass through hole regions and vice versa, then all the electrons in graphene would sit in these pools of their own and graphene itself would not be a conductive material.

Another important fact: in almost any other semiconductor material, you cannot go from electronic to hole conduction continuously, you necessarily go through the insulator region, when the material ceases to conduct at all. In graphene, however, there is no such region - this is also a consequence of various kinds of relativistic effects described in my work on the quantum minimum conductivity of graphene.

Be that as it may, but all this suggests that graphene electronics cannot be built as an analogue of silicon or germanium electronics. In the simplest transistors, by applying voltage to the central region (for example, electronic), you can lock or unlock it. Because of Klein tunneling, you can never lock up a regular transistor in graphene. That is, the graphene transistor should be arranged in a completely different way.

Together with my Manchester friends, I participated in some of the fundamental work in this area - how to make a graphene transistor correctly. The best we could offer is the so-called vertical geometry. With such a scheme, the current does not flow through the graphene sheet, but from one sheet to another ( and ).

I must say that all the other words that I said - the existence of minimal quantum conductivity, hole and electron pools - this is also related to some of my work. That is, from my point of view, I managed to significantly participate in the formation of the language for this new field, which, in general, everyone is now using. And I'm glad that the scientific community found these works important.

What is the current state of all this science? You say that in recent years you have been actively involved in this.

Excellent condition. Graphene is just a fairy tale for several reasons. Well, first of all, people are good ( laughs).

And, secondly, a wonderful balance between theory and experiment, real full-fledged cooperation. That is, as soon as some effect is predicted, it is immediately checked. Or, say, an experiment is being carried out - and immediately theorists take up the explanation of the information received. We can say that all this activity around graphene is just exemplary physics. If, for example, we compare it with another current fashion area, where, in general, many people are even gradually moving away from graphene - with the so-called topological insulators - then such a balance, in my opinion, has not yet been achieved. There, roughly speaking, there are a hundred (or a thousand) theorists per experimenter. Fantasy works for everyone, but there are not enough experiments to bring theorists down to Earth.

And yet, graphene is a fairly simple system, not like the same high-temperature superconductors. There are so many things heaped up there: their chemical formulas are quite complex, and the crystal structure is complex - a million of all sorts of factors. Therefore, there are no special breakthroughs, in general. Now - how much? - For 25 years people have been tinkering, but it cannot be said that we understood something important there, that we solved the problem. And in graphene, since the people are good, because theorists interact remarkably with experimenters, and since the system is still relatively simple, the progress is colossal. At the moment, at the level of the single-particle theory of graphene (the simplest model in which the interaction of charge carriers with each other is not considered), almost everything has already been done: a language has been developed, and the main effects have been discovered. I even got a little bored, I confess, and I thought about moving to another area. But again, due to the fact that the colossal progress in the technique of the experiment, the quality of the samples has already become so high that it has become possible to suppress all these puddles that I spoke about and which prevent any subtle effects from being observed, to come very close to the so-called Dirac point, to the most interesting case, and many-particle effects began to be observed experimentally - effects that are essentially related precisely to the interaction of electrons with each other. And it's like a new world opens up again. That is, the future of graphene theory lies precisely with such many-particle effects - there are now a lot of interesting tasks here.

You mentioned the Dirac point. Tell us more about her.

I hope your readers remember from school that one of the starting points of quantum mechanics was Niels Bohr's theory of the atom. One of the main provisions of this theory stated that the electrons in an atom can not have any energy, but only some certain discrete energy levels. Now this has already been repeatedly tested in practice - for example, in isolated systems (they can even be called "artificial atoms"), known as quantum dots, the energy spectrum is discrete (that is, it consists of individual values).

If we pass to solids, then the spectrum is more complicated. In conventional semiconductors, we are dealing with this situation: some energy bands are completely filled, and some are completely empty. If we have a partially filled band of these allowed energies, it is a metal, a conductor. If some bands are completely filled and others are empty, it is a semiconductor or an insulator. Graphene is quite unique because in its ground state it also has a completely filled band and a completely empty band, but there is no gap between them. And if you look at how it all looks, draw a picture of how this energy center works, then this filled strip can be represented as a kind of cone, on which the same cone stands on top. The most interesting place in the electron spectrum is this cone top. Well, if, as we know how in semiconductor physics, metal physics, we try to build some kind of model - we, physicists, we say Hamiltonian - that describes such a situation, then it will be very similar to the Dirac Hamiltonian of relativistic quantum mechanics.

This point is called the Dirac point. If graphene is not doped (that is, we do not additionally stuff neither electrons nor holes into graphene), then at this point there is the most interesting physics.

Very interesting electronic effects appear at this point. One of the foundations of our understanding of solids and the condensed state in general (solids and liquids) is the Fermi liquid theory developed by the great Soviet physicist Lev Landau. Roughly speaking, this theory says that the addition of the one-electron theory of electron interaction to the equations does not lead to any new qualitative effects, that is, it is not very important - some model parameters simply change. Say, instead of one value of the mass, the magnetic moment, you need to consider others, and that's it. That is why the model with noninteracting electrons usually gives such a good approximation.

So, apparently, graphene near the Dirac point is an exception, that is, the Landau Fermi-liquid theory does not work there. And this, in general, was known for a long time as a theoretical construction, proposed long before the discovery of graphene by my friend and co-author Paco Ginea and other theorists in Spain. All of this has recently been experimentally confirmed. And now, it seems to me, the main efforts of theorists working in the field of graphene should be focused on understanding this non-Fermi-liquid state, on understanding what kind of effects of interelectronic interaction can be expected. This is such a very new, fresh area, extremely attractive to work in.

What's the math there? Is there something interesting not only for physicists?

The one-electron theory is the Dirac equation, from a formal point of view, linear partial differential equations. It's beautiful math. Even mathematicians admit this - there, recently our guys (from our group) returned from St. Petersburg from a large conference on mathematics Days on Diffraction - 2013. For example, in order to build a serious, and not just a purely qualitative mathematical theory of Klein tunneling, you need to use very beautiful, elegant mathematics - the so-called semiclassical approximation, but much more subtle than in the case of ordinary quantum mechanics. Just to take into account this Klein tunneling.

And if we are talking about many-particle effects in graphene, then we are moving to a completely different level, where it is already necessary to use complex methods of quantum particles and field theory, for example, the same methods that people from the theory of elementary particles use to figure out, say why there are no free quarks. And, again, I am involved in some of these works, I am collaborating with a theoretical group at ITEP in Moscow, where we are trying to apply these methods of elementary particle theory to the study of many-particle effects in graphene. That is, there, in general, mathematics for every taste, ranging from the classical mathematical physics of the XIX century, the study of partial differential equations, and ending with modern sophisticated mathematics and numerical methods that are used in the so-called fundamental physics. In general, already in our first works with Andrei and Kostya there was a connection with modern mathematics, the same geometry and topology. Well, of course, not just today, but the one that was 50 years ago. The Atiyah-Singer theorem, for example. And this is already not bad - in solid state physics, for example, mathematics of 150 years ago is usually enough.

A few questions aside. It is well known that you are a believer - an Orthodox Christian. Doesn't this interfere with your communication with foreign colleagues? They say that there are many atheists among modern physicists.

I can say that it creates absolutely no problems for me in communicating with colleagues, at least in the West. I think everyone knows, and I don't really hide it. I would even say that the typical attitude is such, benevolently disinterested. Most, I think, it's just a drum, because a scientist must be judged by his scientific work. If you can talk to me about some interesting science, then they will talk to me about interesting science. These are topics of a kind that are generally not particularly customary to get out in public. You discuss them with close friends and so on. I have close friends who are physicists, and they themselves may hold some other views, but in any case they fully respect and fully understand my religious views. When I was in Russia, together with my co-author, colleague Valya Irkhin, I published two books on science and religion - “Charters of Heaven: 16 Chapters on Science and Faith” and “Wings of the Phoenix. Introduction to quantum mythophysics" ( both books are on lib.ru - and - approx. "Tapes.ru").

It’s just that people generally don’t really think in this direction, but at the same time, for example, I can say with great pride that Kostya Novoselov, when he was not yet a Nobel laureate, but was still a very young man, told me that he read "Wings of the Phoenix" and she made a strong impression on him. Of course, I don’t want to beat my chest and say that it was me, me, I helped him become a Nobel laureate, but in any case, reading my pseudoscientific books clearly did not harm him. So there is a calm attitude here.

As for how I personally combine it, it seems to me that the most important thing to understand here is that you should not mix levels. We are not only physicists, we are, after all, human beings, we have different problems, we have different types of experience - both the experience of everyday life, and some kind of inner, spiritual experience, what is sometimes called mystical experience, and experience of our scientific work, we communicate with women, we communicate with friends, we communicate with children, that is, we live in a multifaceted way, and I don’t think that, say, my religious views somehow directly affect my scientific work or vice versa, or what are my literary pursuits. It’s just that a man is multifaceted, as Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky said, “a broad man”, well, and it all fits calmly. To be honest, I don't have any particular problems with this.

How do you feel about the opening of the Department of Theology at MEPhI?

In principle, if you remember the joke about Vovochka: I would like your problems, Maria Ivanovna, - and so, my attitude is about the same. As far as I read about this story, it really wasn’t done very well - not because it’s about faith or something else, but simply, as they say, I didn’t understand it myself, I only read on the Internet that the authorities were there twisted what was done against the wishes of the people, that they did not take into account the opinion and so on. That is, tyranny is bad. If in this case there was tyranny, then this is bad. And if, as they say, this was done by agreement (maybe this is not the case of MEPhI), then why, well, there is a department, let whoever wants to do it, he does it, who does not want to, does not do it. I see absolutely no problem with this. We have a faculty of theology, we have, by the way, a Catholic university in general. So what? Well, Catholic.

Is it named after a saint?

Holy Radbod, yes. We have a monument to St. Thomas Aquinas in front of the main administrative building. It doesn't bother me in any way. I understand that I am a believer, what to take from me, but I think that most of my colleagues are atheists and this does not really bother them either. Everything is fine. It's just all right. I understand perfectly well that in Russia this is a terribly painful issue, simply because it is extremely politicized, firstly. Secondly, apparently, some of the older generation still have memories of the forced brainwashing by Marxism-Leninism in the Soviet era, about this I can tell a lot of things - I was, after all, forced to graduate from the university of Marxism- Leninism, Philosophical Department. I have a diploma, all this wasted time, it still hiccups.

But, on the other hand, the result in my case was exactly the opposite of what was desired, not only did I not become a Marxist-Leninist, I became an idealist, a believer, a sharp anti-Marxist, that is, in the place of those who are trying to plant some kind of religious, Orthodox, Yes, even atheistic, whatever, propaganda - I would think about it. If this is done in order to curry favor with the authorities and put a tick somewhere for yourself, then what is it to discuss - well, bestiality and bestiality.

If someone sincerely thinks that in this way people can be moved in some desirable direction, I will give a wonderful counterexample. They brainwashed me with this Marxism-Leninism, they washed me into obscurantism, into idealism, into priesthood, as Vladimir Ilyich expressed it there. I think that such diligence in planting Orthodoxy will lead to exactly the same results, they will simply produce not just atheists, but militant atheists - I, as an Orthodox person, are sad to think about this prospect. From these two points of view, that in general any propaganda always achieves goals that are directly opposite to those declared, and that tyranny is not good and people's opinions should be asked, I have a negative attitude towards this story. If we simply talk about the coexistence of the department of theology and the department of nuclear physics and any other within the same educational institution, then I have been working in such an institution for nine years, I am completely happy and see absolutely no problem in this.