Chronicles of Nikolai Dmitriev - in memory of "Soviet Pascal"

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Man was given the commandment "to cultivate and keep" - from him and the demand. Each answer holds: what talent he received from God - he returned this one, gave it to the multiplied. Talent in science is special, significant. This is understandable: science illuminates the earthly path of mankind, and life itself sets the goals of science.

Sarov, inseparable from the name of the Monk Saint Seraphim, a recognized shrine of Russia - what do we know about him? Changed many names, experienced many destinies. City personality. A city-secret, invisible on the map for many years. His doors are closed. Since 1947, Sarov has been an object with a special regime, a pillar of Russia's nuclear security. Since then, he is not only a "factory worker", here physicists and mathematicians solve deep questions. They contain the secret of existence, protection of life, connection with the world through the mind. The Creator builds up the natural laws of development - science comprehends them. The Lord Himself is a great mathematician, Himself an unsurpassed physicist …

Everyone knows: scientists have worked and are working in Sarov. Ask anyone - they will name both A. D. Sakharov and Ya. B. Zel'dovich. Those involved in the exact sciences will note a lot of world-famous scientists - Yu. B. Khariton, I. Ye. Tamm, D. A. Frank-Kamenetsky, N. N. Bogolyubov, E. I. Zababakhin, G. N. Flerov worked here, IV Kurchatov … Twice and three times Heroes of Socialist Labor, laureates of State prizes - their density per square meter of Sarov will be the envy of the capital too.

They came here by direction. Forged by the war years, not spoiled by comfort. They knew how to rejoice at a stack of firewood at the door, a new hospital building, a one-story house in a Finnish village, and the first regular bus. The halo of romance presents scientists as aloof: they are, they say, "not of this world." These are not the people who, after work, peel potatoes, check children's notebooks, and in the middle of the night stand up to babies … Partly, and so: creative work, connected with the exertion of all mental forces, does not let go. It happens that there is no place for ordinary trifles. Not everyone is pragmatic. Someone is immersed in thoughts, absent-minded and incomprehensible. Somewhere, somewhere, but in Sarov they knew it. A world-renowned scientist X went for a walk with a baby carriage in the forest, and returned without it - he forgot about the child. The respected theorist Y came to visit, and then he was looking for his "famous galoshes" for a long time, which he did not take off either in winter or summer, but they were simply washed.

However, "nothing human" was alien to many. In the late 1940s, the future laureate of the Z state awards drove up to the city beach every day on a Ural motorcycle and immediately made a fire - he was very fond of river mussels. Another scientist, an academician in the future, S, while waiting for a truck, himself transported the boards of a collapsible cottage allocated to him on the same motorcycle - out of impatience …

But we want to tell you about a unique, special phenomenon. Once upon a time there was one person in Sarov. Mathematician. He was distinguished by his giftedness, intelligence and, which is unique, human modesty. He is not crowned with worthy glory, his name is not heard. Not endowed with high ranks and positions, he remained an indisputable authority among physicists and mathematicians of the Institute. For those who can assess his level of contribution to science, he remains a genius, and also a simple person, comrade, attentive interlocutor. Employees and friends remember him with special respect. This brilliant scientist, who worked fruitfully at the Sarov Institute for more than 50 years, is Nikolai Alexandrovich Dmitriev. He became one of the founders of the domestic nuclear industry and its living legend.

Both physicists and mathematicians considered Dmitriev "theirs". In mathematics, he was attracted by the almost physical tangibility of formulas. In physics, he strove to provide a mathematical foundation for any processes and phenomena. He had phenomenal analytical skills, he solved any problem that he set for himself or that he was offered. There was a huge amount of energy in him. He spoke forcefully, listened sensitively. I was in no hurry, and did everything in time. Shrewd. In behavior, appearance - and there is no hint of authority. But when he was the only one at the meeting, no matter where: at Kurchatov's or Khariton's, he began to speak, there was silence. Kurchatov, Khariton, Zeldovich fell silent. Even Minister Vannikov. Because what was said by "Kolya Dmitriev" ended the discussion: there was no longer anything to argue about.

***

Nikolai Alexandrovich Dmitriev was born in Moscow on December 27, 1924. His great-grandfather, a Bulgarian, Dmitry, was a priest. Nikolai Alexandrovich's grandfather, Konstantin, is immortalized in Bulgarian history as a participant in the national liberation movement led by Hristo Botev. After the defeat of this uprising, Konstantin emigrated to Russia, took the surname Dmitriev by his father's name, graduated from the cadet school and became a career soldier.

Nikolai Alexandrovich's father, Alexander Konstantinovich, graduated from the cadet corps in Polotsk and the military school in St. Petersburg, participated in the First World War. In the Civil War, he first fought on the side of the Whites, and then served in the Red Army, in the Chapaevsk division. Nikolai Alexandrovich's mother, Valentina Markovna, after graduating from the gymnasium received a certificate giving the right to teach mathematics and music. She met Alexander Konstantinovich in her native Taganrog, where the young military was thrown by the vicissitudes of the Civil War. Of the four children of Alexander Konstantinovich and Valentina Markovna, Kolya was the eldest.

In 1927, Nikolai Aleksandrovich's father was repressed and exiled to Siberia for three years; in 1930, the family came to him in Tobolsk. Their return to Moscow was associated with Kolya's studies. Already in early childhood, his unique abilities were revealed. He learned to read early (before the age of four). And in less than six years, during an illness, he began to read freely in the hospital, including popular science books.

An acquaintance of his father sent a letter to the People's Commissariat of Education about the extraordinary child. The boy was summoned to Moscow, a special commission chaired by the People's Commissar of Education A. S. Bubnov and his deputy N. K. Krupskaya arranged an exam. Kolya amazed me with his knowledge of mathematics, geography, history, literature, social science and natural science. And on November 1, 1933 in the newspaper "For Communist Education" there was a note "A phenomenon that occurs once a century. Nine-year mathematician Kolya Dmitriev". Professor of Moscow State University I. Chistyakov wrote: “The child has an extremely large amount of knowledge., he is not such a mechanical counter, he goes much further. Such phenomena occur once in a century. This child is like Pascal. " But Blaise Pascal is known by millions, and who has heard of Nikolai Alexandrovich Dmitriev today? Only people related to the atomic project.

After the work of the commission of the People's Commissariat for Education, the Dmitriev family was transferred to Moscow. They give a decent apartment in the house where the aviator Chkalov, the children's poet Marshak, and the pianist Oistrakh lived. Kolya was assigned to the 4th grade of an experimental demonstration school. Individual lessons in mathematics, English and French were organized for him (German was studied at school). Academicians N. N. Luzin and A. N. Kolmogorov, as well as Professor M. F. Berg, studied mathematics with the boy. At the age of 13, Kolya became the winner of the Moscow Mathematical Olympiad. In 1939, at the age of 15, he entered the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of Moscow State University. The event was unusual and received press coverage.

During the war, Nikolai Aleksandrovich, together with the university, was evacuated to Kazan, Ashgabat, Sverdlovsk, where he continued his studies in difficult conditions. My father volunteered for the Moscow militia and died in the fall of 1941. Nikolai Alexandrovich remained the eldest in the family. In 1945, he brilliantly graduated from the university and entered graduate school. The first scientific works of the nugget were highly appreciated by mathematicians. Brilliant prospects are opening up in science. But … The potential man of the century remained unknown. There were compelling reasons for that. Dmitriev's fate was taken away from "pure" mathematics in August 1945 - American atomic bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Much later Dmitriev would say in an interview: “I expected that after the war there would be a broad evolution towards socialism all over the world, and the West’s transition to atomic blackmail dealt a painful blow to my illusions. I would give 10 years of my life, or even my whole life - the creation of the Soviet atomic bomb."

In 1946, N. A. Dmitriev, as a junior researcher, was hired by the Institute of Chemical Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences and enrolled in the department of Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences Ya. B. Zel'dovich. He, a mathematician by education, quickly and successfully joined the intense activity of the department. In the period 1948-1955, Zeldovich's employees were actively developing the first samples of atomic and thermonuclear weapons. This is how Nikolai Aleksandrovich's participation in the atomic project began. Since August 1948 he has been working in the theoretical department of Zel'dovich in Sarov. A constellation of names is already sparkling here: Khariton, Zeldovich, Frank-Kamenetsky, Leontovich, Sakharov … All are already academicians, doctors of sciences.

Academician A. D. Sakharov in his "Memoirs" (Moscow, 1996, p. 158) wrote: "The youngest was Kolya Dmitriev (Nikolai Alexandrovich), an unusually talented another brilliant work in which his mathematical talent was manifested. Zeldovich said that Kolya, perhaps the only one among us, has a spark of God. You might think that Kolya is such a quiet, modest boy. But in fact, we are all in awe of him, as before the supreme judge ".

Julius Khariton, Arkady Brish and Nikolai Dmitriev.

The first samples of nuclear weapons were created when there was no computer. The theoretical works of Nikolai Alexandrovich played a unique role here. In 1948, Nikolai Aleksandrovich completed one of his most significant works: he developed the theory of an incomplete explosion. R. Peierls, who was later crowned with numerous awards of the world physicist community, was engaged in similar issues in the American atomic project. The results of Nikolai Aleksandrovich surprisingly coincided with the experimental data. In 1952 he developed a method for calculating critical solution systems. Nikolai Aleksandrovich brilliantly defended his Ph. D. thesis. When passing the exams, he surprised the commission with the knowledge of four foreign languages: French, English, German and Polish.

The emergence of atomic weapons required the development of means of protection against them. In the early 1950s, the question of the need to improve the air defense system (air defense) arose sharply. In 1954, N. A.

N. A. Dmitriev was one of the first at VNIIEF to start developing his own programs, adapted for calculating a large number of problems in a short time. Under his leadership, at the turn of 1956-57, the first version of the two-dimensional gas dynamics program "D" was proposed, named after the first letter of the author's surname of the method. The programs created by N. A. Dmitriev are the prototype of modern computer programs. ID Sofronov, head of the mathematical department of the Institute in 1966-2001, said about Nikolai Aleksandrovich as follows: “In my opinion, he was in no way inferior to either Sakharov or Zeldovich and surpassed all the others put together”; "N. A. Dmitriev started everything, he was the first person in the Soviet Union who, for those low-power machines that were available then, began to develop two-dimensional programs. We began to develop them without having a machine. When we got it, the first control task, counted on it in the process of acceptance, was the problem solved by the program "D"."

When electronic computers appeared, Yu. B. Khariton decided to consult with Academician A. N. Kolmogorov about which machines should be purchased and how to organize their use. A. N. Kolmogorov replied: "Why do you need electronic computers? You have Kolya Dmitriev."

Summing up the work of Nikolai Aleksandrovich Dmitriev as a mathematician, the scientific director of the Institute, Academician V. N. Mikhailov, said: but they worked in much more favorable conditions. Dealing with applied problems, he was in those years beyond any competition …"

The breadth of Nikolai Aleksandrovich Dmitriev's scientific interests is striking. As a physicist, he actively worked in the most complex areas, was engaged in theoretical issues of quantum mechanics, gas dynamics, nuclear physics, astrophysics, thermodynamics. Over the years, he brilliantly solved the problems of enormous complexity that constantly arose before the developers of nuclear weapons. Nikolai Aleksandrovich possessed an exceptional ability to find simple solutions to complex problems. Professor V. N. Mokhov recalled that almost everyone used this ability. There was even a bike: "How can you quickly solve a difficult problem? - You need to go and ask Nikolai Alexandrovich." How many visitors stayed in his study - it was a real pilgrimage! One leaves - the other comes … A blackboard with an indelible inscription "hurry slowly!", A hand-held adding machine "Felix" next to the book "Questions of causality in quantum mechanics", Polish newspapers on the table …

He was always available, patient, always at the height of his talent, his unique knowledge. As a person, personality, boss and scientific advisor, Nikolai Aleksandrovich possessed unique features inherent only to him. He quickly grasped the essence of the issue under discussion, assessed the prospects for a solution. His advice was truly invaluable. Their number cannot be counted: physicists and mathematicians, from academicians to young specialists, went to consult him. Having laid the foundations for the development of the most important scientific areas, Nikolai Aleksandrovich refused the degree of doctor of physical and mathematical sciences for a set of scientific works on the creation of an atomic bomb without defending a thesis.

Another facet of Nikolai Alexandrovich's personality is a thinker, politician and citizen. He was a bright personality here too. In communication with Nikolai Alexandrovich, an atmosphere of attention, mutual simplicity, openness, lightness arose. From the first minutes - "feedback", equality. The dialogue was tolerant, benevolent, and, at the same time, on the part of Nikolai Alexandrovich there was firmness, convincing arguments, utmost clarity of speech. At the moment of the conversation, he seemed to be creating something - his speech was so weighty and capacious.

It was possible to discuss everything with Nikolai Alexandrovich: from the latest news to the events of the times of Joseph, the first minister under the Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt. He turned to the Gospel as an authoritative source. Nikolai Aleksandrovich developed the philosophy of physics, thought a lot about politics, religion, philosophy. His position showed intellectual honesty, a sharp, paradoxical mind. His ideological position was impulsive, sometimes contradictory. Positioning himself as a materialist, he did not deny religion. Nikolai Alexandrovich believed: "The meaning of human life is to participate in the work of God, to participate in the ongoing creation of the world." "It is correct not to oppose Marxism and Christianity, but to consider Marxism a Christian trend, moreover, the closest to the original teaching of the Gospel," he wrote in 1962.

He knew history well, understood the intricacies of politics, the complexity of real life situations. Here are excerpts from his article on A. D. Sakharov: “To do politics quite honestly, you have to get up to the level of Jesus Christ”, “Relying on the Western media, receiving the Nobel Peace Prize means going to a certain humiliation…” These phrases in his mouth were not dissonant.

As a party member, he often criticized party leaders. He was hot in disputes. In 1956 V. Dudintsev's novel "Not by bread alone" was published. The book caused a loud scandal - not so much literary as political. The novel describes the dramatic fate of an inventor facing a bureaucratic system. The party leadership condemned the novel. Nikolai Aleksandrovich did not agree with this opinion and pointed out that there are disagreements within the party leadership of the country. For disagreement with the opinion of the leadership of the CPSU, N. A. Dmitriev was expelled by the city committee from the party members. The decision was to be approved by the regional committee. By the time his case was considered by the regional committee, N. A. Dmitriev's foresight had come true (the anti-party grouping of Molotov and others was condemned). The decision to expel him from the party was canceled. By the way, the life attitudes of the hero of Dudintsev's novel were as follows: "Man was not born for fatty foods and well-being, this is the joy of worms. A man must be a comet and shine." To be a comet and to shine … For all his talent, Nikolai Alexandrovich remained disinterested and benevolent, pure and bright person. A short, thin figure, surprisingly modest, even shy appearance, inexpensive clothes without fashion elements. People were drawn to him. Everyone loved him. Four children, eight grandchildren. He was a wonderful family man. He cherished his family, devoted a lot of time to children. He spent his vacation on tourist trips, hiking in remote places, kayaking trips - with his family and friends. He loved to hike, exploring the surroundings with great enthusiasm. Friends and numerous colleagues have visited the Dmitrievs' cozy and hospitable house - they recall with pleasure the evenings they spent there. Nikolai Alexandrovich knew literature very well, he loved classical music and poetry. An album has survived, in which he wrote out his favorite poems.

On a kayak trip on the Chusovaya river

In 2002, a book was published dedicated to the memory of this man: Nikolai Alexandrovich Dmitriev. “Memoirs, Essays, Articles”. - Sarov: RFNC-VNIIEF. For his work and creative contribution to the creation of nuclear weapons, N. A. Dmitriev was awarded state awards. Their list looks very modest in comparison with his merits. He was awarded two Orders of the Red Banner of Labor (1949, 1951), the Order of Lenin (1961), the Stalin Prize (1951) and the USSR State Prize (1972).

The twentieth century was a special century. He created many tragedies and wars. How many sacrifices have been made, how much grief has been poured … It is sometimes necessary to suppress evil, and for this you need a sword. The sword of our time is extremely dangerous, even without hitting the enemy. It contains a potential violation of the laws of life. And yet … its creation can be justified: "he who does not resist evil is swallowed up by it." As if summing up his activities, in 1993, to the question of the correspondent of the newspaper "Krasnaya Zvezda": "What is most dear to you?" - Nikolai Alexandrovich replied: "A bomb! There was no more useful thing than a bomb. It contained the threat. This is the most important thing for those times. And not only for those …" Let's remember Hiroshima. This could be with us!

Today Sarov has opened the pages of his centuries-old biography - he threw out many archaeological artifacts of the Middle Ages and his monastic past during the revival of churches. Sarov, who has experienced a second birth, spiritual, inner, knows a lot and remembers everything … Sarov is a creator, a city with a promise of the future, with ellipsis. The ellipsis is sonorous. And Sarov is also a city of scientists. One of them, a remarkable man with a unique talent, is reminiscent of the memorial plaque on the house where he lived, and the passage named after him. His name is Nikolai Alexandrovich Dmitriev.