The special report dedicated to the 110th anniversary of Academician G.N.Flerov

Chronicle of recent years or "There is no time for a run,
there is time for a jump"

What happened next? Colleagues and students of Georgy Nikolaevich answer this question in the collection dedicated to the anniversary of the founder of the laboratory, tracing the evolution of his ideas and aspirations. We will try to restore the course of further events from the issues of the newspaper "Dubna" of the second half of the 1980s - early 1990s, that still bear traces, if not autographs, of vivid activity of Academician Flerov interrupted only by his unexpected death...

In January 1986, JINR Directorate, together with Directorate of the Institute for Nuclear Research in Troitsk, organized an excursion for the members of the Scientific Council to the Moscow Meson Factory under construction - an off-site session-seminar. The accelerator complex developed there was a colossal construction and experts from the JINR Member States and Heads of the leading scientific areas of our Institute were interested in much of what they saw and heard. We left for Troitsk early and returned to Dubna only late in the evening. On getting off the bus and in the lobby of the hotel, I decided to write down the last short interview-impressions. I also came up to Georgy Nikolaevich.

"Tomorrow, together with Yuri Tsolakovich Oganessian we will discuss some of the ideas that are used at the accelerator in Troitsk," he said. "Probably, they can be used on our cyclotrons. Very interesting work. A very young team capable of doing great things has been established in Troitsk.

From the height of his scientific and life experience, he strictly and clearly filtered the impressions of the day in order to return to them the next day, pouring into the next actions. And the laboratory lived in those days with the main task - the team was on its way to storm the 110th element. Involved in this dramatic process, I used to spend half a day in this laboratory, meeting with chemists, physicists, designers, accelerators, writing down key phrases in my notebook that developed into short stories about people that were devoid of any pathos but nevertheless, realized the importance of their cause.

My report, published in the newspaper on 26 February, 1986, had a simple title: "On the way to the 110th." This was the next stage of the "nuclear assault" and at a meeting of the laboratory staff the director emphasized that experiments on the synthesis of the 110th "require maximum mobilization of efforts from us, since West German physicists in Darmstadt are only two months away from starting sessions on their accelerator, also aimed at the synthesis of the 110th element. Competitors breathed in the back - there was both the sporting excitement of a fierce competition and a verified calculation and the high reliability of the work of the entire team. About the operators at the U-400 cyclotron, physicists told me: "Golden people. Absolutely reliable. They are concerned not only with the operation of the accelerator, but also with the final results of our experiments." And it is no coincidence that evaluating the first results, Georgy Nikolaevich emphasized:

"Recently, the enthusiasm of people that work in the main area has increased significantly... It reminds me of the period of the 1960-1970s, when a number of new elements were synthesized in the laboratory. Perhaps, this atmosphere of enthusiasm was also influenced by other achievements, such as, the development of the IC-100 accelerator that has shown that we still have gunpowder in the powder flasks (although we are peaceful people). In any case, the FLNR team once again shows that the ability to focus efforts on the main areas at the moment can produce good results. I think that beyond the 110th, the next elements await us, with the synthesis of which the prospects of the laboratory are closely united."

But not everything went so well in the "Danish kingdom" (pun intended, my friends at FLNR, after the publication of newspaper materials for the anniversaries of Flerov and Oganessian and a number of other "anniversary" articles, dubbed me a "Danish" journalist, that is, timing my materials to memorable dates). On 4 February, 1987, my correspondence "Imaginary and real activity" was published. It was based on one of the rare precedents, when not only the "leading and guiding force" in the person of the Party Bureau, but also the founder of the laboratory was subjected to public criticism at the general laboratory party meeting. The three speakers were particularly combative and one of them, the most ardent fighter for "perestroika", already had in his personal archive over three hundred pages of letters of complaint to various authorities and responses to them.

With their precise arguments and facts, the employees that spoke at the meeting in response to criticism reduced the emotional fuse of the "subverters" to nothing. Disregarding the invectives addressed to him ("a bad moral climate had developed in the laboratory"), G.N.Flerov said that the laboratory directorate distributed a questionnaire among the leaders of scientific topics that would allow to analyze the state and prospects for the development of research work, to draw conclusions... According to the director of the laboratory, participation in this process by experts, leading scientists from other laboratories and institutes of the world could become a kind of "government acceptance" when evaluating new projects, the results of the work carried out. Today, this practice works at the level of institute-wide Programme Advisory Committees in the main research areas and the Scientific Council includes experts from leading research centres.

We left the meeting late. In the corridors, offices, all the vicissitudes were still being discussed. "I suppose, you won't publish my speech, will you?" one of the ardent "fighters for perestroika" asked near the checkpoint. "Why won't we print? With precision, as they say, to the point."

The jocular nickname of the "Danish" journalist has evoked a memory concerning materials that go beyond the declared chronological framework but it seems to me, they will add new personal touches to the newspaper chronicle. These were "several stories about Vasily Maksimovich Plotko, a holder of the Order of Lenin, laureate of the State Prize of the USSR, a mechanic at the Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions, written down from the words of his colleagues." The jubilee (he turned 60) was on vacation when I was preparing this material and therefore, I turned to his colleagues and co-authors for help. Here is what Georgy Nikolaevich said about Plotko:

"When I first met Vasily Maksimovich, I learned that he was a surveyor by profession. But I also found out that he had an old motorbike that he kept in perfect condition. This means that the man understands and loves metal. We have always needed such people.

Plotko's invention is always directly related to the urgent tasks of the laboratory. Based on many years of observations, I can say that Vasily Maksimovich is an exemplary person in all respects. Everyone knows his constant readiness to help and his selfless dedication to work. His work is close to scientific work in its essence but fortunately it is free of what is called egocentrism that sometimes accompanies scientific work.

Such words of an academician about a worker-mechanic are worth a lot. They even reveal his (laboratory director's) principles of "working with personnel". If he finds out, for example, that an old motorbike is in perfect condition or understands geodesy, it is not difficult to guess, by means of deduction, what the person is worth as a specialist and what he can give to the laboratory. And if this deduction is accompanied by the legendary Flerov intuition...

By the way, I knew from the stories of the laboratory staff that the director always talked to each of the newcomers personally when they applied for job. This is how Vladimir Kutner, a graduate of Gorky State University, got "on the carpet" to Georgy Nikolaevich. It was 13 August, 1968. The graduate's thesis on theoretical nuclear physics interested the academician. But the very first question somewhat stunned the newly minted theoretical physicist:

"Do you know what an oil vacuum pump is?"

"I do, Georgy Nikolaevich, they teach everything at the university," Volodya was not confused.

"Well, that's good. And now," the director turned to his deputy, "Zhenya, show the young man the laboratory." And Evgeny Dmitrievich Vorobyov took the young employee on an excursion.

Everything he saw for the first time was very interesting. Especially the work that was carried out in the sector of Evgeny Denisovich Donets.

"No, Volodya, you have not guessed Georgy Nikolayevich's idea," Evgeny Dmitrievich said intriguingly. "Most likely you are to be engaged in ionic sources. This group needs a young physicist today."

Thus, the first "personal" assault on V.B.Kutner started in the laboratory, the scientific style of which can be characterized by the Goethe formula of "storm and stress"... August, holiday time. The three-week holiday for young specialists had to be reduced to three days. The newlyweds Volodya and Nelli did not have a "honeymoon".

"You still have time to rest, Volodya and now we have a very hot time." The second conversation with the director was already quite specific. "We need new ion beams to carry out new experiments. Try to get a twelve-charged xenon ..."

And not just to get, but also to achieve a record intensity of 10 microamps. The task for the theorist was not trivial. But there were teachers nearby. They were A.S.Pasyuk, B.N.Markov, V.M.Plotko, laureates of the State Prize, there was a unique stand developed at FLNR. There was fascinating work with plasma - solar matter focused on the volume of a pencil with a temperature of 1140000 degrees Celsius. And one could see it!

In general, the first task was completed. And G.N. demanded immediate publication. This first preprint by V.B.Kutner at JINR was the shortest - one and a half pages.

Later on, super-tasks of a different level were set and met but as before, the style of work of the team that Kutner eventually headed, was determined by the motto: "There is no time for a run, there is time for a jump." I quote Volodya and suddenly I understand that the phrase is very close in spirit to his teacher - G.N.Flerov... But let's return to our chronological framework - the late 1980s. Georgy Nikolaevich's "polyvalence" noted by his colleagues even in his youth did not weaken over the years. On 11 February, 1987, a large report from a meeting on multineutron systems was published in the newspaper - the investigation of nuclei consisting almost entirely of neutrons. Georgy Nikolaevich participated in this meeting with interest and commented on his interest:

"For me, this meeting is special. On the one hand, it has awakened memories concerning the startup of the first neutron reactor in our country, on the other hand, it has opened up prospects for the implementation of the most daring ideas of today, related to the experimental detection of multi-neutron nuclei. When about forty years ago, under the supervision of I.V.Kurchatov, the reactor was started up, for several days "in order of rest" after a busy startup period, research was carried out on it for di-neutron. It was the ultimate dream of scientists of that time. Today, the results of some theoretical investigations indicate the possibility of occurrence of four-, five-, six-neutron systems. It's up to the experiment to decide.

Participants of the meeting with the President of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR G.I.Marchuk.
Front row (left to right): A.N.Sisakyan, A.A.Logunov, D.Kish (Hungary), G.I.Marchuk, N.N.Bogolyubov, M.G.Meshcheryakov, A.A.Vasiliev, V.P.Dzhelepov; in the second row: I.A.Savin, Yu.N.Denisov, D.V.Shirkov, A.I.Romanov, A.M.Baldin, S.I.Fedotov, G.N.Flerov, R.Poze (Germany), Yu.Ts.Oganessian, V.G.Kadyshevsky, V.G.Kalinnikov, V.L.Aksenov, Ts.Vylov (Bulgaria).
Dubna, 1990

Our laboratory has all the conditions for such research - powerful beams of heavy ions, advanced chemical methods, low-background facilities. There are proposals to accelerate tritium nuclei on a cyclotron to an energy of 50 MeV per nucleon and then perhaps, "neutron droplets" and other exotic objects will be registered, even if their lifetime is only 10^-10 seconds.

That is why I left everything for two days and tried not to miss a single report. In my opinion, the meeting gave an answer to the main question: how to further develop this area of nuclear physics.

We currently have intense ion beams and powerful techniques required to meet this task. It owes a lot. But we do not want to remain monopolists in our field of scientific research. Having developed further cooperation with the scientific centres of the JINR Member States, we turned to scientists from other laboratories, where experiments on the synthesis of new elements are carried out, with a proposal to participate in joint research in Dubna."

In our newspaper, we have never been journalists in the conventional sense of the word, although we have worked in various genres - news coverage, correspondence, essay. In our questions to scientists, we most often put what our interlocutors wanted to hear from us. We just knew what audience we were working for. Our readers did not care about the "intricacy" of our questions - it was the answers that mattered. And for the 75th anniversary of Georgy Nikolaevich, I had the nerve to prepare a "correspondence" interview with him, using the groundwork already prepared by that time for the brochure "These omnipresent ions." The text clearly showed his civic position, his thoughts and his characteristic handwriting. G.N. even said some nice words to me, endorsing this material for the newspaper.

In a short newspaper report on the scientific seminar dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the scientist ("Dubna", 16 March, 1988), just only the list of speakers took up a long paragraph: FLNR Deputy Director Professor Yu.Ts.Oganessian (today, RAS academician, Scientific Supervisor of the Laboratory), Professor K.A.Petrzhak (co-author of the spontaneous fission of uranium nuclei discovered together with G.N.Flerov in 1940), Director of LHEP Academician A.M.Baldin, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences L.P.Feoktistov and Professor L.I.Ponomarev (I.V.Kurchatov Institute), Corresponding Member of RAS I.Zvara, Professor I.G.Berzina (MIIT), Head of the Department of Physics Faculty of Moscow State University Professor A.F.Tulinov, Professor B.G.Ieruzalimsky (Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute named by B.P.Konstantinov), Professor L.V.Ionova (V.I.Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry), ITEP Director Professor I.V.Chuvilo, Head of the LHEP Sector Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences E.D.Donets, Head of the FLNR Department V.I.Kuznetsov, Head of the FLNR Sector E.D.Vorobyov. All they were associates, colleagues, students, "irradiated" by Flerov, drawn into his multivalent orbits at different stages of scientific work. At the seminar, Georgy Nikolaevich shared his thoughts on the prospects for the development of the main scientific areas that the FLNR team currently works on, the use of nuclear physics methods in related fields of science, technology and the national economy.

The year 1989 came. The Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions said goodbye to one of its most honoured basic facilities - the U-300 cyclotron that had faithfully served science and practice for almost thirty years. The young leaders of the laboratory decided to reconstruct it in order to obtain exotic nuclei mentioned above. On that March day, there were many sad and encouraging words. "Goodbye, youth!" FLNR veterans said, for whom the first experiments at this cyclotron were associated with a romantic time of hope, enthusiasm, endeavour and discoveries.

The designer of U-300, the chief researcher of NIIEFA named after D.V.Efremov Ivan Fedorovich Malyshev, was invited from Leningrad. And FLNR Honorary Director G.N.Flerov recalled how twenty years ago he had opposed him at his defense at the Leningrad Institute of Physics and Technology. The defense had been held in a spacious hall, where there had been even a room for a large high-voltage facility. "But if the drawings made by Ivan Fyodorovich and his collaborators had to be assembled here, they would hardly fit in this immense room..." (These are the true words of G.N., spoken at the "farewell meeting"). And I.F.Malyshev was brought to the laboratory not only by memories, but also by the desire to help colleagues in Dubna to design the U-400M cyclotron that would take the place of its predecessor. And U-300 will remain in the memory of veterans and in the minds of young people as one of the important milestones in the history of the establishment and development of heavy ion physics...

The next milestone in the history of the laboratory and in the biography of its honorary director was the awarding of the Prize of the USSR Council of Ministers to a group of FLNR staff members as part of a large group of authors for the development and implementation of systems for preparation of high-purity water based on the membrane microfiltration method in the manufacture of microelectronic products. On 9 August, 1989, Georgy Nikolaevich commented on the contribution of his Dubna colleagues:

"In our laboratory, the scientific basis of the method has been developed and the high efficiency of the use of accelerated heavy ions for the industrial production of nuclear membranes has been proved. The complex of equipment developed by us for the production of nuclear filter material includes facilities for irradiation, physical and chemical processing, control, as well as a specialized accelerator IC-100.

The installation of filtering equipment in the technology of microelectronics production allowed to ensure the manufacture of highly integrated products and almost entirely to eliminate the need to purchase the relevant equipment from abroad...

I am very pleased to congratulate my colleagues V.A.Shchegolev, E.D.Vorobyov, A.Yu.Didyk, Yu.Ts.Oganessian, P.Yu.Apel, S.P.Tretyakova and wish them new creative success.

"50 years with fission". Meetings in the land of America" was the title of the interview with Professor Yuri Tsolakovich Oganessian that together with Georgy Nikolaevich took part in the International Conference "50 years of nuclear fission discovery" that was held in Washington on 26-28 April, 1989.

"Academician G.N.Flerov made an interesting report on the main stages in the development of nuclear physics in the USSR until 1941," Yu.Ts.Oganessian noted, "And to my surprise, he said very little about the discovery of spontaneous nuclear fission, showing that it was a link in the chain of rapidly developing scientific events in the field of nuclear physics that developed in our country in the late 1930s. Georgy Nikolaevich's report that was greeted with long applause, ended with the words: "Then the war startred"..."

* * *

In conclusion of my notes-memoirs about Georgy Nikolaevich, I would like to say that FLNR established by him was and is my laboratory for me. My peers and friends worked there "on the verge of the known and the unknown", and the older generation, still "Flerov's call", willingly shared scientific news and comments with the young journalist. It was a densely eventful time. There were - and I remember in a series of newspaper routine - vigils with duty shifts at the accelerator console and interviews with members of the dramatic epic of the "assault" on the 110th element, reports on the startup of new experimental facilities, meetings with members of the pivotal work on 112th element chemistry, pages of a diary telling about the path to the islands of stability, interviews with participants of many conferences held by FLNR that gathered the world's scientific elite. Some of these meetings came to my mind on the eve of the anniversary of the founder of the laboratory.

The materials of the special issue prepared by Evgeny MOLCHANOV,
Illustrations from the JINR photo archive