1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910453144903321

Autore

Hargittai István

Titolo

Buried glory : portraits of Soviet scientists / / Istvan Hargittai

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York ; ; Oxford : , : Oxford University Press, , [2013]

©2013

ISBN

0-19-998561-8

0-19-998560-X

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (369 p.)

Disciplina

509.2/247

Soggetti

Scientists - Soviet Union

Science - Soviet Union

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction -- Nuclear physicists. Igor Tamm: exemplary consistency ; Yakov Zeldovich: Soviet Prometheus ; Andrei Sakharov: Soviet conscience -- Low-temperature physicists. Petr Kapitza: respected Centaur ; Lev Landau: genius & Evgenii Lifshits: more than Landau's pen ; Vitaly Ginzburg: amateur astronomer ; Alexei Abrikosov: "unmanageable" -- Chemists and chemical physicists. Nikolai Semenov: Mr. Chain Reaction ; Yulii Khariton: director of "Los Arzamas" ; Boris Belousov & Anatol Zhabotinsky: "impossible" reaction ; Aleksandr Kitaigorodskii: Soviet maverick ; Aleksandr Nesmeyanov: brilliant administrator and Soviet courtier.

Sommario/riassunto

Moscow's Novodevichy Cemetery is the final resting place of some of Russia's most celebrated figures, from Khrushchev and Yeltsin to Anton Chekhov, Sergei Eisenstein, Nikolai Gogol, and Mikhail Bulgakov. Using this famed cemetery as symbolic starting point, Buried Glory profiles a dozen eminent Soviet scientists-nine of whom are buried at Novodevichy-men who illustrate both the glorious heights of Soviet research as well as the eclipse of science since the collapse of the USSR. Drawing on extensive archival research and his own personal memories, renowned chemist Istvan Hargittai bring these f