SERGEY IVANOVICH VAVILOV

An Essay on His Life and Work*)

T. P. Kravets

S. I. Vavilov was born on March 24 (12), 1891, in Moscow, in Presnya. Sergey Ivanovich, the youngest (third) child in the family, was sent to the Commercial School on Ostozhenka (now Metrostroevskaya Street). This was the best commercial educational institution in Moscow in its organization, with an excellent selection of teachers, richly equipped classrooms, and practical lessons for the pupils. Instruction there was set at a high level, and the demands made on the students were very strict. But the parents of the pupils, in sending them to this educational institution, often lost sight of one important circumstance: the Ministry of Trade and Industry took special measures to preserve the pupils of secondary commercial educational institutions for the needs of trade; it deprived those completing the course in them of the right to enter higher school**), with the exception, again, of commercial institutes specially created for that same purpose. But S. I. Vavilov aspired to the university, to the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics. The difficulties did not stop him; on the contrary, he displayed a persistence and purposefulness rare for a young man—he studied Latin and successfully passed the matriculation examination, which opened the way for him to any higher school***).

*) A speech dedicated to the memory of the deceased, delivered at a joint meeting of the Leningrad scientific institutions of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and the State Optical Institute.

**) Another physicist famous in our country, P. N. Lebedev, was also educated in the commercial department of the Moscow Peter and Paul School; in order to enter a higher technical educational institution, he enrolled in advance in Khainovsky’s private real school, which gave the right of admission to higher school.

***) Latin, the consequences of which S. I. Vavilov encountered when he was translating Newton’s works into Russian. Another founder of the study of Newton in Russia, A. N. Krylov, also had to finish learning Latin.

In the autumn of 1909 S. I. Vavilov was enrolled as a student in the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University.

At that time, the faculty comprised the teaching of all the sciences of those cycles which are now divided among separate faculties: mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, geology and soil science, and geography. The faculty was divided into two divisions—the mathematical sciences and the natural-historical sciences. In the first of these, future mathematicians, mechanicians, astronomers, and physicists received their education. It was here that the young Vavilov entered.

Moscow University in 1909 was experiencing a period of great flourishing. This applied, in particular, to the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics. In the first year the student at once came under the spell of the brilliant lecturer, the mathematician B. K. Mlodzeevskii. Less brilliance, but great depth, he could appreciate in the lectures of D. F. Egorov. At that same time the future founder of the Moscow school of the theory of functions, N. N. Luzin, was beginning his creative work. Mechanics (to which, it is true, the student turned only from the second year) was in the hands of N. E. Zhukovskii and S. A. Chaplygin—these names speak for themselves. The lectures on astronomy by V. K. Tseraskii were likewise striking in their outward brilliance—students from all faculties flocked to hear them. His senior assistants were the well-known Bolshevik scientist P. K. Shternberg and the still living S. N. Blazhko, then still a young scholar. Finally, physics was represented by an especially brilliant constellation: N. A. Umov—a deep theoretical mind, inclined toward the broadest generalizations and philosophical conclusions, a materialist of the old school, and in theory an adherent of classical methods and conceptions; A. A. Eikhenvald—an active and inspired propagandist of new views, who shortly before had published his classical studies on the magnetic action of moving charges, a man of many talents and enormous personal charm; and, finally—of him one should really have spoken first—P. N. Lebedev, creator at Moscow University of the first major school of experimental physicists, little known to the broad public, avoiding public appearances, but among those more closely acquainted with science famous as the author of world-renowned investigations of short electric waves, of the pressure of light on solid bodies (1900–1901), and on gases (1908–1910).

Let us also name a few figures from other divisions and faculties: in chemistry—N. D. Zelinskii; in zoology—M. A. Menzbir; in botany—K. A. Timiriazev; in mineralogy and crystallography—V. I. Vernadskii and Yu. V. Wulff; in geology and paleontology—A. P. Pavlov and M. V. Pavlova; in geography and anthropology—D. N. Anuchin.

S. I. Vavilov and his fellow first-year students may be said to have been fortunate: at the end of the first semester and before the beginning of the se—

Moreover, in December 1909–January 1910, the regular congress of natural scientists and physicians was held in Moscow; a physics section was also organized there. The congress was exceptionally successful. Physicists came from all parts of the country; the Moscow student youth could hear reports and addresses by P. S. Ehrenfest, A. N. Krylov, A. F. Ioffe, D. A. Rozhansky, A. R. Koli; naturally, the “Lebedevites” also spoke, headed by their teacher. The meetings were held not only at the University, but also at the Higher Women’s Courses and in other educational institutions. In the university’s—then still new*)—large auditorium, “Sam” P. N. Lebedev delivered a report in which he repeated before the audience all the principal experiments of A. G. Stoletov—experiments that in their day had been so difficult, but by the indicated time could already be repeated on an experimental lecture table. Assisting in the experiments was A. G. Stoletov’s famous assistant, I. F. Usagin. Since 1909 marked the 70th anniversary of Stoletov’s birth,**) the Petersburg participants of the congress, after the report, laid a wreath on the portrait of A. G. Stoletov hanging in the auditorium. The delegation from Petersburg consisted of I. I. Borgman, K. K. Baumgart, and A. P. Afanasiev.

A feeling of enormous uplift seized all the members of the congress as, from the reports, debates, demonstrations, and influx of participants, it became clear what a great step forward Russian science had taken in the first years of our century. This tremendous rise was felt especially vividly by the young participants of the congress.

Among the student stewards of the physics section, the figure of Sergei Vavilov was distinctly memorable to us.

But then the holiday ended, and workdays came again. The student Vavilov zealously worked in the enormous physics laboratory of Moscow University, which occupied the entire fourth floor of the Institute building. He managed to complete a record number of tasks and thereby opened for himself the door to P. N. Lebedev’s special laboratory. Thus he had the good fortune to join P. N. Lebedev’s school.

P. N. Lebedev’s school had likewise reached its highest flourishing by that time: 25 young people, pupils of P. N., were working in it simultaneously. All their work was united by a common subject matter, connected in one way or another with the work of the celebrated leader: these were either works on spectral analysis, understood in the broadest sense of the word, or works devoted to the properties of gases at high rarefactions, or investigations of dielectric constants, or, finally, interesting attempts to transfer methods of investigation from one branch of physics to another.

*) The Physics Institute of Moscow University was opened in 1904.

**) A. G. Stoletov was born in 1839 and died in 1896.

In particular, the first cycle was extensive: here one person investigated the absorption of decimeter waves, another—the change in the magnetic properties of matter in the same region, a third—absorption in the visible region, and a fourth—the same, but in the infrared region, with the construction of an original recording spectrograph. The senior member—not by years, but by merit—P. N.’s assistant P. P. Lazarev had by that time completed his work on the photochemical fading of dyes. Another trainee was creating a new method for obtaining centimeter waves (with a high-voltage arc).

Close association created a friendly collective, ardently devoted to the common interest in science. Everyone admitted to the laboratory had a key to the entrance door, to his own room, to the workshop, and to the library. Work at any time was encouraged. It was considered obligatory to have a clear idea of the subjects of one’s comrades’ work. P. N. himself came to the laboratory daily and spent hours there in conversations with individual students. P. N. was a passionate lover of music, a regular attendee of symphony and philharmonic concerts. In his pupils he valued every manifestation of talent and love of art. His varied and original conversations were one of the strongest impressions made on his students.

Every week there was a “colloquium”—what is now called a seminar. The colloquium was not instructional in character. Beginners had to raise themselves to an understanding of the reports and discussions, which were always extraordinarily lively and interesting, while the leader of the colloquium astonished everyone with his colossal erudition and memory, with his close acquaintance with a multitude of remarkable people of his century—the conversations about them were continued after the colloquium somewhere in an inexpensive restaurant, where the whole band would go, headed by P. N. The colloquium was the first of its time in Moscow, and indeed in all Russia. Representatives of other specialties also attended it: K. A. Timiryazev, N. N. Luzin, S. N. Blazhko, and others.

There was yet another way to draw young people into the common work and gradually move them from the level of student to the next level—that of beginning scientist. Namely, P. N. himself once a week gave a special course, under various titles, on the theme “What Is New in Physics.” He would come to a small lecture room, where 30–40 people gathered, with two or three notebooks of new journals in his hands and announce what was of interest in the given issue; then he would recount the content of an article, then from memory tell the whole history of the question over the past 20 years, explaining what still remained unclear here, and outline possible topics for further research. All this was often amazingly interesting.

When S. I. completed the ordinary practicum, there were two or three vacancies in P. N. Lebedev’s laboratory, but Lebedev himself no longer had either the time or the strength to take on yet another practicum student. His senior assistant P. P. Lazarev had already, for a year, had from P. N. the proposal to take newcomers under his own supervision, and was carrying it out in practice. Thus the second-year student Vavilov came under his immediate tutelage. Incidentally, P. N., and after him P. P. Lazarev, never tired of asserting that initiation into science should begin no later than the second year. An opportunity arose to test the correctness of this principle. The first experiment of P. N. and P. P. was a brilliant success. It is permissible, however, in the present case to attribute a considerable share of this success not to the principle, but to the object of the test—S. I. Vavilov.

P. P. Lazarev was occupied at that time with anomalies in the thermal conductivity of gases at extremely low pressures (his master’s dissertation), and earlier had already completed the first part of his second major work—on the fading of dyes. Later, this latter topic served as the subject of his doctoral work. He had already established that fading (i.e., a decrease in absorption) proceeds in proportion to the amount of absorbed energy; the proportionality coefficient remains the same for all wavelengths lying within a single absorption band.

For the further development of this topic, P. P. enlisted one of his colleagues at the Moscow Higher Technical School, where he had obtained a chair—B. S. Shvetsov, who, at P. P.’s suggestion, carried out a small study on the influence of temperature on the photochemical reactions with dyes investigated by Lazarev. B. S. Shvetsov showed that this influence is very small. At the same time, it is known that ordinary reactions, on the contrary, reveal a very strong dependence on temperature. It was precisely this dependence on temperature of the thermal fading of the same dyes that the student Vavilov was to study. The method of study was spectrophotometric; the instrument used was the well-known and, at that time, very advanced König–Martens apparatus.

It is easy to imagine the enormous impression, and no less enormous influence, which the young Vavilov must have experienced upon entering the environment described: lectures (of course, including the above-mentioned special course of P. N. Lebedev), colloquium, his own scientific work, constant scientific communication both with comrades and with his supervisor, the closeness of an exceptional person such as Lebedev—all this in those years when all of a person’s spiritual capacities grow and develop especially rapidly. These conditions could not fail to affect, in the most favorable way, the exceptionally capable and talented youth.

But S. I. Vavilov also had to receive other, subject-related lessons in his student years.

In 1905, frightened by the rise of the revolution, the tsarist autocracy made certain concessions to society, which it immediately wanted to take back once it had managed to strengthen its position. Among these concessions was the so-called “autonomy of the higher school,” as a result of which higher education institutions received the right to elect their own administration—rectors, prorectors, deans, and so forth; the maintenance of order within the walls of the school was entrusted to these elected collegia. But unrest continued in the higher school—the so-called “student disorders.” The then minister of public education, Kasso, decided to use this pretext to interfere in the affairs of the universities; he issued a circular by which rectors and prorectors were obliged, when “disorders” arose, to summon the police to the university. The Presidium of Moscow University recognized the minister’s order as violating the declared autonomy of the higher school and therefore as illegal; to this effect it submitted a report to the University Council. The Council approved the report of the presidium and the latter’s noncompliance with the minister’s order.

At this time another round of student unrest arose. The Presidium did not summon the police to suppress it. Then the minister removed from office the rector of the university, the prorector, and the assistant rector.

The members of the University Council, who had sanctioned the “disobedience” of their presidium, for the most part expressed solidarity with the presidium and shared its responsibility. Therefore they collectively tendered their resignations. The best left: Timiryazev, Eikhenwald, Zelinsky, and many others. P. N. Lebedev left as well. Together with their professors went the junior instructors—privatdozents, assistants, and others. Moscow University became deserted.

Departure from the university could not but entail a worsening of the material and scientific situation of many professors and teachers.

Especially difficult was the position of P. N. Lebedev. By that time he was gravely ill (angina pectoris), had not earned a pension, and only crumbs remained of his former fortune. P. N. had no outside appointment anywhere, and his departure from the university threatened the destruction of his entire school—the first in Russia and, of course, exceptional on an international scale as well. But he, obeying the voice of duty and honor, left the university. His pupils received from him this lesson too—a lesson of high honor and civic-mindedness.

Moscow society came to the aid of the great scholar and his school. A very modest laboratory was hastily organized—in a basement, in house No. 20 on Mertvy Lane.

SERGEI IVANOVICH VAVILOV

(now Ostrovsky Lane). There began to work those collaborators and pupils of Lebedev’s school who had no opportunity to work at their own places of service. There S. I. Vavilov did his work as well. His older comrades remember well his room and the place in the room where his laboratory table stood.

By 1914—the year he completed his university course—S. I. already had to his credit two printed papers: the first—the above-mentioned work on the thermal fading of dyes, and the second—a review article—on the photometry of multicolored sources. With the first article he entered the ranks of working physicists and, in particular, the circle of ideas of the Lebedev–Lazarev school. As for the second article, it too has major significance in the history of S. I.’s creative work: being a pupil of P. P. Lazarev and working by the photometric method, he undoubtedly had, together with his teacher, to ponder many questions of photometry lying on the boundary between physics and physiology. Undoubtedly, the article mentioned must be regarded as S. I.’s first excursion into a field that later became the subject of his principal investigations—on the independence of absorption from the intensity of the light flux, on the discrete structure of the latter. For the psychology of creativity it is interesting to establish, through the example of S. I., how the largest ideas of a major scientific worker take shape at the very earliest stages of his creative work, finding their reflection in achievements at all stages of his subsequent scientific activity.

Before speaking of S. I.’s completion of the university course, it is necessary to mention one more detail of his university period—his summer vacations. It must be said that P. N. Lebedev was a passionate alpinist (he knew Switzerland and Tyrol excellently) and zealously propagated this form of recreation among his pupils: he drew up itineraries for trips, and before the summer arranged a special, concluding colloquium with a demonstration of photographs—both his own and those of other alpinists (for example, Yu. V. Wulff, an amateur of stereoscopic photographs). S. I. was never a sportsman, but he loved tourism very much and in the summer traveled, on very modest and inexpensive terms, to Italy. There he, already excellently knowing and loving Russian painting and engraving, also passionately fell in love with early Italian art—architecture, sculpture, painting—learned to understand them well, and even wrote two short articles on Italian cities (Arezzo and Verona) in the Izvestia of the Society of Teachers of the Graphic Arts. We can see how, in preparing for scientific activity, S. I. worked persistently and comprehensively on himself, developing all aspects of his richly gifted nature. And if he, already as president, authoritatively expressed his opinions among artists (for example, on the question of the artistic decoration of Neskuchny...

palace, on the restoration of the Kunstkamera, on articles on art in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia), he had acquired this authority by great and tireless labor already in the early period of his life.

But now the university years were behind him. In May 1914 S. I. took the state examinations. He immediately received an offer to be retained at the university (which corresponds, in modern terminology, to postgraduate study). The university, having lost almost all its staff in physics, was in urgent need of replenishing these ranks, and a person with a developed striving for a career could easily have made one by accommodating those administrators who, despite everything, had remained at the university. But S. I. was not such a person: even earlier, in 1911, he had preferred to expose his scholarly fate to a known risk rather than compromise with his conscience, with his feeling of loyalty to his teachers, with his civic duty. And now he resolutely rejected this offer. The prospect of scientific activity hung in the air. Having declined the offer to remain at the university, S. I. had to perform military service.

To perform this duty S. I. enlisted as a volunteer in one of the sapper battalions of the Moscow Military District. Apparently, he did not manage to be assigned in Moscow itself, and he was enrolled in the 25th Sapper Battalion, stationed, if we are not mistaken, in Zaraisk. In the summer months, however, the entire 6th Sapper Brigade went to camp in the village of Lyubutskoe, in a wonderful locality on the bank of the Oka, 12 km from Aleksin in Tula Province. S. I. found himself serving together with another physicist, S. N. Rzhevkin, and in his free time could go to Aleksin to see other comrades living there. This life, though military, was nevertheless entirely peaceful; it was sharply interrupted in July 1914. General mobilization followed, and the First World War of 1914–1918 began. S. I. was drawn for a long time into its terrible and inexorable vortex. First as a private, and then as an officer, he fought far and wide across the fields and mountains of Galicia, Poland, and Lithuania. The war, of course, gave him few gratifying impressions. We know very little about his military affairs—he was modest and did not like to talk about himself. We know that he soon wanted to work where his participation could be more highly qualified, and therefore managed to transfer to a radio unit; there he could act no longer as Ensign Vavilov, but as a scientist able to understand faulty circuits and “nonfunctioning” apparatus, to obtain the required results and improve the latter. We know that he remained faithful to those traditions which he had received from his teachers and which he preserved for his whole life: during his military duties he managed to find moments of leisure for scientific work, for literature; in 1914–1918 there appeared the above-men...

...the well-known articles on Veron and on Arezzo, the short note “On One Possible Conclusion from the Experiments of Michelson and Others,” and, in 1919, as an echo of his wartime work, the article “The Frequency of Oscillations of a Loaded Antenna.”

In 1918 S. I. Vavilov was demobilized and returned to scientific activity. S. I. was struck by the immense prospects that the Great October Socialist Revolution had opened before the country. He was especially impressed by the enormous efforts which the young, not yet strengthened republic was making along the path of developing scientific research work and higher education.

One of the first scientists to come over to the side of Soviet power was S. I.’s teacher—P. P. Lazarev. Just before the revolution he had received under his authority an institute (subsequently the Institute of Physics and Biophysics of the People’s Commissariat of Health), which had been conceived by the Moscow public for P. N. Lebedev, but was realized only after the latter’s death, already during the First World War. Upon his return, S. I. naturally came to speak with his former teacher about work. Lazarev immediately accepted him into his institute. Here a new period of S. I.’s work began. We shall speak later about the separate directions of this work.

PEDAGOGICAL WORK IN HIGHER EDUCATION

S. I. began to carry on this work almost from the very moment of his return—first as a lecturer, and then as a professor at the Moscow Higher Technical School. I note that here, in addition to general physics, S. I. also taught theoretical lighting engineering. We see that in his teaching as well S. I. preserved his photometric interests.

An important stage in S. I.’s growth as a teacher and supervisor was his concentration of his work at Moscow State University. Responsible work at the University apparently gave great satisfaction to S. I., who developed here the full breadth of his creative abilities. The methods of drawing students into work, the methods of supervising them were well known to him from his own first steps in youth: “colloquia,” conversations with students, closeness to them, the reading of special courses—all this was used by him to the fullest extent. With his innate talent, the success he achieved in a short time may be regarded as both understandable and natural. Here S. I.’s first pupils grew up, his school was formed, whose representatives are well known to us; they surrounded S. I. as a close-knit family until the last day of his life.

But lecturing always represented a certain physical labor for S. I., since, owing to the weakness of his lungs, it required...

considerable strain. In any case, while being an excellent lecturer, S. I. was burdened by the very process of reading lectures. Perhaps this circumstance should partly be attributed to the fact that, as early as 1932, he completely gave up teaching, which had been going so successfully for him, and made scientific supervision of the laboratory the sole further method of his work with young people.

SCIENTIFIC WORK

Here we shall dwell only on clarifying those main directions along which S. I.’s work proceeded, their genesis and development.

The time when S. I. began to work coincides with the crisis in physics, a profound analysis of which was given by V. I. Lenin in his brilliant work Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. From the theoretical point of view this crisis had its roots in the distortion of “classical” ideas about the “micro-world,” ideas which in essence did not differ from those that physics had formed for itself about the “macro-world.” In particular, in optics a major turn toward corpuscular views on the nature of light was taking shape. Here a peculiar dualism reigned, the simultaneous coexistence of two mutually exclusive theories, both of which were essentially unsatisfactory, since each explained only one set of phenomena, refusing “for the time being,” on principle, to explain the rest.

In his first works S. I. reflected all these painful searches of modern science. Let us dwell on two or three examples that will show us how S. I.’s basic views gradually developed and how in the end they led him to a harmonious synthesis.

The first field of S. I.’s work after his prewar studies was photometric phenomena. S. I. undertook an investigation of the extent to which the basic law of absorption, given already by Bouguer, retains its significance: the amount of energy absorbed in a certain layer is proportional to the amount of energy entering that layer. Observance of the law seemed to S. I. to be good proof of the correctness of classical conceptions. And so, carrying out excellent measurements over an extraordinarily wide range of values of the luminous flux (S. I. ultimately varied it by \(10^{18}\) times (!)), he found no appreciable deviations from the law. But this problem did not cease to occupy S. I. thereafter, and in his school those fundamental violations were found which the law undergoes both at extremely large and at extremely small values of the luminous flux. In the first case, when a large number of atoms are transferred into the excited state and lose the ability to absorb light of the former wavelength, absorption

must fall. This will occur the sooner, the longer the electrons, having passed to the “excited” level, remain on it. The corresponding phenomena were observed first by Vavilov and V. L. Levshin, and then by B. Ya. Sveshnikov. Conversely, at low values of the luminous flux, when a comparatively small number of quanta falls on the receiver per unit time, statistical fluctuations of the luminous flux should be observed, and these fluctuations should be the greater, the fewer the quanta. From the magnitude of the fluctuations one can find the absolute value of the number of quanta constituting the flux. This, on the one hand, gives a new, vivid proof of the discrete structure of light, of the finite value of its elementary constituent parts—quanta, or photons. On the other hand, it is a new photometric method for detecting extremely small luminous fluxes. All these fundamental ideas are set forth with great profundity in S. I.’s last work—in the book The Microstructure of Light*. We see what threads stretch to this masterpiece, which crowns S. I.’s life’s path, from those painful searches and doubts that are clearly visible in his first scientific works.

Another main field of optics in which S. I. worked is the field of interference phenomena. How are the wave conceptions, which serve as a necessary prerequisite for explaining interference, to be connected with quantum views on the nature of light? S. I. seeks the resolution of this question in the most complicated problems: phenomena occurring at large angles between interfering beams, at small values of the corresponding fluxes, and so on. These are again the most fundamental questions of the newly developing optics. S. I. obtained outstanding results in this direction as well. He showed, among other things, that the old conception of the molecule as a system radiating uniformly in all directions is too elementary and cannot depict the full complexity of the phenomena actually observed. Into the classical picture of radiation it is necessary to introduce certain complications: the atom must be likened either to a dipole (the trivial case) or to a quadrupole, whose radiation will be limited to several preferred directions. We see the continuous development of the scientist’s thought and its final completion in the brilliant teaching on the interference field, presented in the same book mentioned above on the microstructure of light.

There is still one fundamental field in which S. I.’s conception led to the discovery of an entirely new optical phenomenon. We are speaking of the so-called “Cherenkov phenomenon.” What should arise in a medium in which an electron moves with a velocity,

* We know that, independently of B. Ya. Sveshnikov, the necessity of this decrease in absorption at high values of the luminous flux was predicted by A. S. Toporets.

exceeding the speed of propagation of light in this medium? Example: a gamma electron with a speed approaching \(2.9 \cdot 10^{10}\ \text{cm sec}^{-1}\) in water, where the speed of propagation of light is \(2.25 \cdot 10^{10}\ \text{cm sec}^{-1}\). Let us use an analogy: a steamer is traveling along the Neva at a speed of 20 km/hour, while the speed of propagation of waves on the Neva is 16 km/hour. We know that in that case two wave furrows extend behind the bow of the steamer at an angle whose tangent is 0.8, i.e. about \(40^\circ\). These furrows run forward and only forward; their “rays” are directed at an angle of \(50^\circ\) to the axis of motion of the steamer. A similar phenomenon in optics was discovered, through difficult and prolonged experiments, by P. A. Cherenkov. Its detailed theory was given by I. E. Tamm and I. M. Frank.

But, of course, the main area of S. I.’s scientific activity—the area for work in which he is known far beyond the circle of specialist scientists—is his research on luminescence. Let us point out the genetic connection of these studies with S. I.’s early works and their significance in assessing the general character of his activity.

In quantum theory, questions of luminescence stand alongside questions of absorption: an absorbed quantum transfers an electron to a higher energy level; subsequently the stored energy may either pass entirely into heat—this is the case of “pure absorption”—or pass entirely into emission—this is the case of “resonance emission”—or, finally, only part of it may be expended on emission. But we remember that in his first work S. I. was under the lawful and very strong influence of the ideas of his teacher P. P. Lazarev. And from experiment Lazarev had derived the law of the constancy of the magnitude of the coefficient of useful photochemical action within the limits of a single absorption band. Naturally, in phenomena of luminescence S. I. too had to look for a similar regularity—and he found a much broader regularity, the so-called “Vavilov law” on the constancy of the magnitude of the quantum yield of luminescence within the limits of the entire spectrum.

The works on luminescence are one of S. I.’s most important achievements. It may be said without exaggeration that our knowledge of luminescence before them and after them stands at completely different levels. It is also important that in this field S. I. succeeded in completing the entire cycle of activity that is the duty of a Soviet scientist: he studied the phenomena of luminescence, investigated them more deeply than his predecessors, created a school working in this field, wrote excellent popular articles and books on luminescence, and, finally, broadly introduced into practice the achievements of his laboratories. We know that the appearance in our Union of luminescent lamps is to a considerable degree the result of his energy and initiative.

WORK IN THE FIELD OF THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE

Popular-science and publicistic works

S. I. was interested in the history of science from his early youth. In chronological order, first place here belongs to S. I.’s works in the cycle “Newtoniana.”

In 1927 the scholarly world marked 200 years since the death of Newton. To this jubilee date the physical community of the Soviet Union paid due attention; in particular, the journal Advances in the Physical Sciences devoted an entire issue to the event. Here, among other material, there was also an article by S. I. on Newton: “The Principles and Hypotheses of Newton’s Optics.” It contains extensive historical material and reveals in the young author a profound acquaintance with the circumstances of Newton’s creative work and with its ideological content.

Here, too, S. I. rescued from oblivion two optical memoirs of Newton, where the author of the famous saying “Hypotheses non fingo”*) appears unexpectedly to the reader as a physicist who readily made use precisely of the method of hypotheses. The issue of the journal was very handsomely produced; we can discern behind all its illustrations, headpieces, etc., the active participation of S. I.—this is his style, manifested by him many times in other later editions.

This part of S. I.’s work culminated in the publication of Newton’s Opticks in S. I. Vavilov’s translation.

Departing from chronological order, let us briefly enumerate S. I.’s other works on Newton. In January 1943 Moscow celebrated the tricentenary of Newton’s birth. On this occasion the Academy of Sciences issued a special collection, Isaac Newton. Here in second place (the first was given to the translator of the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, A. N. Krylov) we find S. I.’s article “Ether, Light, and Matter in Newton’s Physics.” Here again two methods of physical investigation are vividly contrasted—the method of principles and the method of hypotheses; Newton’s most important hypotheses are presented, and the closeness of Newton’s fundamental physical views to modern views is especially emphasized: a negative attitude toward the ether hypothesis, conviction in the dual (corpuscular-wave) nature of light, etc. The same is expressed in a more popular form in the article “Newton and Modernity” in Priroda for the same year, 1943.

Another major work by S. I. was timed to this jubilee date as well—a scientific biography of Newton, the first edition of which appeared in 1943 and the second in 1945. Thanks to this we

*) “I do not feign hypotheses.”

obtained the first serious biography of Newton in the Russian language.

In 1946 S. I. published, in the “Classics of Science” series, the last optical work by Newton that had been unknown to the Russian reader—his Lectures on Optics. In the editorial article S. I. recounts the incredible history of this work: it had been forgotten (!) in Newton’s homeland, and its Russian translation is in fact the first and so far the only complete translation of Newton’s work into a living language. We are faced with an astonishing fact: a remarkable scientific monument had been forgotten by scholars for at least an entire century. Refraining here from comments and epithets addressed to Newton’s compatriots, so proud of his glory, S. I., as president of the Academy, was able in 1916 to send as a gift to the Royal Society of London (which celebrated Newton’s jubilee in July 1916, three years late) a collection of all Newton’s works in Russian, including one that did not exist in English.

For the same jubilee date S. I. made his last contribution to the knowledge of Newton—he wrote the report “I. Newton’s Atomism.” It was printed in Russian in UFN for 1947.

S. I.’s works on the Newtonian heritage placed him among the foremost world experts on Newton. Before the Russian reader he has a historical merit: he acquainted him with all the optical works of one of the founders of modern natural science—he accomplished in the field of optics what had earlier been accomplished, with respect to the Principia, by A. N. Krylov.

However, Sergei Ivanovich’s greatest merits lie in the study of the history of national science. And here his chief merit is the restoration to his proper place of the colossal figure of the first Russian academician, M. V. Lomonosov. Who has not written about Lomonosov? Yet it would not be an exaggeration to say that neither the true stature nor the true image of our brilliant compatriot has yet been clarified, and that the content of his creative work is still not known to our reader in all its fullness. If this situation is now beginning to change for the better, then, after the investigations of B. N. Menshutkin, the chief merit in this belongs, of course, to Sergei Ivanovich. Here the principal work of the deceased must be called the publication of the complete collected works of Lomonosov, with many of his purely scientific works appearing in Russian at all for the first time. The first two volumes have already appeared in 1950 and 1951. The publication of the third volume is expected in the near future. For us, physicists and chemists, and especially for those who do not know Latin, the first four volumes will be of outstanding interest as a complete documen-

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... of development, on the one hand, of Lomonosov’s creativity, and, on the other, of that structure of knowledge and ideas which are characteristic of his epoch.

S. I. wrote several works devoted to clarifying individual features of Lomonosov’s scientific creativity. In the new edition of Lomonosov’s biography written by B. N. Menshutkin, the chapter devoted to optics was redone by S. I. In addition, S. I. wrote separately on Lomonosov’s “night-vision tube” and his theory of “colors,” and other articles. In all these works there shines through a genuine love for the creative work of the patriarch of Russian science and a profound reverence for his genius.

The same love for Lomonosov, the same lofty patriotism also marked other undertakings of S. I. connected with the name of Lomonosov. He organized two annual meetings in memory of Lomonosov. He organized the Lomonosov Museum. He published the “Lomonosov Collections”—collections of articles illuminating individual aspects of Lomonosov’s creative work. He in every way welcomed and promoted research on Lomonosov—for example, the works of M. A. Bezborodov and many others.

One of S. I.’s principal undertakings was a new history of the Academy of Sciences; he created a collective of enthusiastic workers in this field and, to the last day of his life, did not diminish either his interest or the pace of work in this direction. In connection with this he was an ardent supporter of collecting, preserving, and working up archival materials on questions of the history of science. The workers of the Archive of the Academy of Sciences will never forget his tireless initiative in these matters and his support for all undertakings of this kind.

Here we have been able to touch only upon S. I.’s most important works on the history of science. It is necessary to add that, in creating them, he invariably stood on the ground of historical materialism, the principles of which he strove to apply creatively to questions of the history of science.

Let us dwell briefly on S. I.’s works on the history of science abroad. We have already spoken above of the Newtonian series. Let us say a few words about S. I.’s works on Lucretius and on Galileo.

Lucretius attracted S. I. as a consistent, passionate and, above all, talented propagandist of the ideas of materialism in refined poetic form. He devoted to him a report at a joint session of the Departments of Physico-Mathematical Sciences, History and Philosophy, Literature and Language (18/I 1946)—one of his first presidential addresses. Allow us to quote from this report (it appeared in the “Commentaries” to Lucretius’ poem, in the 2nd volume of the edition in the “Classics of Science” series) the opening lines: “Hardly any other poetic and scientific work of antiquity—even if one speaks of the creations of Homer, Euripides, Euclid, Archimedes, Virgil and Ovid—has brought down to our days such a same ...”

freshness and topicality as Lucretius’ unfading poem. It was admired by Cicero and Virgil; the fathers of the Church angrily attacked it, rightly discerning in Lucretius a terrible danger to themselves. This poem defined many features of the worldview of Newton and Lomonosov, delighted Herzen, deeply interested the young Marx, and served as the banner of mechanical materialism for F. Büchner. The German translation of Lucretius’ poem (by Diels) appeared with a preface by Einstein. Lucretius was probably read by Turgenev’s Bazarov, and the heroes of A. France did not part with the cherished book even at the most critical moments of life.”

The subtle analysis of the poem does equal honor to Vavilov the historian, Vavilov the physicist, and Vavilov the philosopher.

Especially remarkable is S. I.’s article in the collection dedicated to the 300th anniversary of the death of Galileo (1642). To give a full idea of it would mean copying a large part of it here. It contains an exposition of S. I.’s views on the history of science and represents a creative application of the basic conceptions of historical materialism to the history of science.

Brought up on its ideas, S. I. attacks with great severity the conception of the history of science as the history of the continuous logical development of ideas. He shows that the history of science is not the consistent, “one-dimensional” development of ever more complex knowledge; that it knows cases of the complete oblivion of what posterity had regarded as most important, and so on. S. I. considered work in the history of science important, but insistently warned against the danger of making it the possession of people who had not been able to engage in science itself. In his opinion, candidate dissertations in the history of science should be admitted only as a rare exception; doctoral dissertations he regarded as a natural phenomenon, connected with the formation in a qualified scholar of the structure of his own thoughts and ideas about the course of the historical process in his chosen branch of science.

We do not consider ourselves competent to analyze in detail the philosophical side of S. I.’s scientific activity, and we hope that other people will be found who will carry out this work at the proper level.

One thing is beyond doubt: S. I. studied deeply the foundations of dialectical materialism and strove to make it the guiding method of his scientific creativity. The ideas of dialectical materialism are not something external in his writings—they permeate his thought, determine its course. It is enough to read such works of his as “New Physics and Dialectical Materialism,” “Lenin and Modern Physics,” and others from this cycle to be convinced of this. The extraordinarily valuable journalistic writings of S. I., full of ardent patriotism—his reviews—

“Soviet Science at a New Stage,” “Soviet Science in the Service of the Motherland,” and “Science of the Stalin Era,” written by him already during his tenure as president of the Academy, are a profound assessment of the unprecedented development and qualitative characteristics of the science of the Stalin era, and of its exceptional role in the great work of building communism. These works express the aspiration of S. I.—president of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR—to place science at the service of the people, at the service of the construction of its bright future.

Among his other books of a popular-scientific character, we would place first his remarkable little book The Eye and the Sun. We confine ourselves to this mention only because of the necessary brevity; in general, however, this activity would deserve separate and very detailed consideration.

SERGEI IVANOVICH AS SCIENTIFIC DIRECTOR OF THE GOI AND OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE USSR

In 1931, the founder of the GOI, D. S. Rozhdestvenskii, felt his strength declining and decided to withdraw from the day-to-day scientific leadership of his beloved creation. As his successor he chose S. I. and made him an offer to move to the Institute for a leading position. After some hesitation, S. I. accepted the responsible post of scientific director of the GOI. Everything needed for this work had been given to him by nature and developed by unremitting work on himself: youth (41 years), health, knowledge, talent, and an ardent, active love for the cause. Let us note the main things that come to mind in connection with these recollections: the new laboratory headed by S. I. himself; the excellent works that came one after another from his laboratory; the splendid seminar, which always attracted many participants from other laboratories; and the high authority which S. I. imparted to all the work of the GOI.

From 1932 onward, the GOI acquired a “rival,” which, even if it did not take from the GOI S. I.’s love for it, nevertheless demanded much time and care. We are speaking of FIAN. When in 1932 S. I. moved to Leningrad, he also received charge of the Physico-Mathematical Institute, then a very modest institution with fewer than ten employees. Managing this institution, located not far from the GOI, presented no difficulty. Matters became worse when the Academy of Sciences moved to Moscow, and the physics section of the PMI was transformed into FIAN and began to grow rapidly. For S. I. there began a difficult period of constant travel between Leningrad and Moscow. We shall not speak here of S. I.’s work at FIAN; but whoever compares today’s FIAN with the modest PMI will appreciate the organizational work of S. I., borne by him on his shoulders over the last 15 years.

But already from the first days of his academic work S. I. was not only director of the Institute of the History of the Academy of Sciences; several other lines along which his labors were directed immediately became apparent. Thus, very soon he began to take a close part in the publishing activity of the Academy and appreciated the opportunities that the Academy provided for work in this direction. But S. I. became especially close to the Archive of the Academy of Sciences—this richest collection of priceless monuments of Russian science and antiquity; he took a leading part in the Commission on the History of the Academy, which worked in close connection with the Archive. Through his ardent and tireless efforts, the work of resurrecting the history of academic science, its organization, struggles, and achievements was raised to an enormous height, placed on the firm and solid basis of direct documentary investigation and study, and transformed from an individual undertaking into a public cause.

The Great Patriotic War brought a change in the subject matter of S. I.’s scholarly work. His work as plenipotentiary of the Defense Committee demanded from him new feats of labor. They still await their investigation and assessment. Here it is enough to say one thing. Close friends, observing him in those days, already clearly saw that he was one of the nearest candidates for the most responsible posts in the administration of Soviet science.

The Great Patriotic War ended. In June 1945 S. I. was elected to the post of president of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Let us say a few words about this aspect of his activity.

In tsarist times the president did not administer the Academy, but only represented it on appropriate occasions. The actual administration was shared by the permanent secretary, who directed the scholarly activity of this corporation, and the vice-president, who was in charge of the entire administrative side of the Academy’s management. It may be said that the first president to take the matter of administering the Academy wholly into his own hands was S. I. How he managed to cope with this extraordinarily expanded task can be told only by people very close to him, who can testify how much persistent labor, nerves, and strain he spent on it...

What comes to mind first of all in connection with S. I.’s activity as president of the Academy?

It would be no exaggeration to say that it is precisely with his work that the full implementation of the planned principle in the work of the Academy is connected. S. I. understood his task as the introduction into the work of a true, complete regularity. Possessing many-sided and profound knowledge, and at the same time enjoying unlimited authority among scholars of the most diverse specialties, S. I. showed himself to be a true master of science: to each scientific institution of the Academy he indicated its significance and place in the general structure, organized what was lacking, and strove to use for the needs of science and construction the maximum forces that were at the disposal of the Soviet

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...of the state for this cause. He also sought new forces, so as to place them at the service of the great cause—sought them in the unused reserves of local and national cadres. It is no accident that under him the Academy’s bases and branches underwent great development, and a number of new academies were opened in the Union republics. S. I. organized, under the Academy, a Council for coordinating the scientific activity of the Academies of Sciences of the Union republics and himself headed this most responsible undertaking. As a result of such systematic organizational work, the Academy, which in the postwar years had attained an unprecedented scope, became one powerful organism placed at the service of the great tasks of building communism.

In his personal scientific work, as in his organizational and administrative activity, S. I. adhered to the principle: science must serve the people; he could not conceive of science torn away from practice, and admitted purely theoretical work only as a prelude to new and still broader practical applications of the results achieved in theory. Let us recall that under him, in the Academy, special attention was paid to introducing completed work into production, and that accounting for this side of the Academy’s activity was organized.

In the sphere of the Academy’s publishing activity, S. I.’s name is associated with the organization of a new series of popular scientific literature, understood very broadly, as well as of the splendid series “Classics of Science” and of biographies; separately, with the excellently conceived series “Literary Monuments,” the series of mass popular books that had only just begun, and much else. Let us wish that these series, in memory of S. I., may receive further dissemination and development. Let us recall also an undertaking of tremendous cultural significance—the timely completion, for the anniversary celebration, of the monumental academic edition of Pushkin.

S. I. energetically joined in the work of restoring the Academy’s institutions that had suffered from the war. With his active assistance, new construction proceeded at the Pulkovo and Simeiz observatories, destroyed by the Hitlerite occupiers. At the same time S. I. also took care of preserving the historical monuments of the Academy. Not without S. I.’s participation was the restoration of the lyceum assembly hall, through which one now walks with such involuntary emotion. It was he who undertook the artistic restoration of the old Kunstkamera and adorned its tower with a gilded armillary sphere.

In recent years, at the direction of the Party and personally of I. V. Stalin, a fruitful method of creative work has received broad development in science—discussions on the fundamental problems of a given science, on its nearest goals and methodological orientations. S. I. assisted in the unfolding of scientific discussions, personally took part in a number of them, and summed up their results.

But all these are major tasks, broad undertakings. S. I. did not shun “small matters” either, and in them, perhaps, best of all manifested...

were his attention and participation toward everyone around him. By personal intervention he eliminated every injustice, every “minor malfunction of the apparatus” that he saw himself or that was pointed out to him.

Finally, a few more words about S. I.’s activity outside the Academy.

S. I. was a deputy of the Supreme Soviet. Thousands of people turned to him on many matters in which his personal intervention could prove necessary and useful. And he patiently and attentively heard each one out, writing down in a thick book the essence of the matter and its possible direction in the future. A deputy is a servant of the people, and S. I. found the strength and the opportunity for this honorable but difficult service as well.

S. I. was editor-in-chief of the second edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. Only the first three volumes saw the light of day with his personal guiding participation, although under his direction a considerably larger number of volumes had been prepared. We know what an enormous share of labor he contributed to this work of exceptional scientific and political significance. Here too he acted according to his usual method: he himself worked for four, and, noticing mistakes, corrected them by personal example of how the work should be done properly and exemplary.

S. I. was chairman of the All-Union Society for the Dissemination of Political and Scientific Knowledge. Thus he directed the work of popularizing knowledge also along the lines of lecture propaganda, in addition to the work he conducted through book publishing houses. Under his leadership the Society turned into a powerful organization of all forces working in the field of political and scientific enlightenment of the broadest masses.

S. I. was important and significant because in all his activity he was guided by the instructions of the Party, to whose ideas he, a non-party scholar, was devoted, for he realized that the cause of the Party is the cause of the people. The building of a new society seized S. I. and inspired him in that great labor which he had taken upon his shoulders. It was not simply labor—it was a heroic deed. In performing it, S. I. gave all of us who knew and observed him an unattainably lofty example of inspired service to the Motherland on all the difficult historical paths along which it boldly advances, led by the Soviet government, the Party, and the great leader of progressive humanity, I. V. Stalin.