Received by a native of Russia, Mikhail Katsnelson. The message said that Katznelson received the award for "using ideas from physics elementary particles in the study of graphene." Mikhail Katsnelson himself told Lenta.ru what exactly these ideas were and how they were used.
Lenta.ru: This year you received the Spinoza Prize. As follows from the official statement, for work on graphene. Tell us more about them.
First of all, I will say that before the start of all this activity in 2004, I was very far from graphene. More precisely, I studied magnetism, the physics of strongly correlated systems (all sorts of superconductivity). No nanotubes, quantum Hall effect and other sections typical for a graphene specialist. However, in 2004 I am here in Nijmegen ( At that time, Mikhail Katsnelson already lived in the Netherlands - approx. "Tapes.ru"), met with Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov. Kostya was a graduate student here, just defending his dissertation, and Andrey was present as a co-supervisor of the work. I wanted to talk to him about Kostya’s dissertation - it was on magnetism, a topic close to me at that time. Andrey almost immediately told me that they were no longer working on this topic, and began asking some questions that had to do with graphene - about Dirac electrons in a magnetic field. Somehow, word by word, I found myself involved in this activity.
At first, I must admit, I didn’t take it all very seriously. And then it turned out that I have been doing this for eight years - now graphene activity makes up 70 percent of all my work. Perhaps the fact that I came from a different area played into my hands and gave me the opportunity to look at many issues from a slightly different angle than people with the right, so to speak, background looked at. At that time, it was known that current carriers in graphene are (terminology) massless Dirac fermions. Simply put, they resemble particles that have been accelerated to speeds on the order of the speed of light. That is, these very fermions are described by equations similar to the equations of such relativistic particles in accelerators, with the only difference that the role of the speed of light there is played by a value 300 times less than this speed. This is, if you like, a model of the Universe in which the world constants are different, but the laws of physics are, in general, the same.
The Spinoza Prize, named after the Dutch philosopher Benedict Spinoza, was founded by the Netherlands Organization for Basic Scientific Research (NWO) in 1995. This is the highest scientific award in the Netherlands. It is awarded to Dutch scientists who occupy leading positions in science. There is no clear list of scientific fields considered by the commission - the decision on the award is made for each nominated scientist separately. The winners receive a bronze statue of Spinoza and also share 2.5 million euros, which they can spend on further scientific research.
It turned out that such a view from the relativistic side quantum mechanics(theories of quantum objects, which also obey the theory of relativity) turned out to be very fruitful. Apparently our most famous work according to the theory of graphene, this is what we called Klein tunneling (), and, as far as I understand, it was especially noted when awarding the prize.
This is what it's about. There is such a phenomenon in quantum mechanics - tunneling. It is very important because it determines many useful phenomena: some types of nuclear decay, radioactivity, effects in semiconductor electronics. The essence of the phenomenon is as follows: quantum particles, unlike classical ones, can pass through potential barriers with some probability. That is, if you put a wall, then a particle can leak through it. There is a subtlety here: it is believed that quantum mechanics works for everything small, and classical mechanics for everything big, therefore, when the barrier becomes high and wide, then quantum mechanics must coincide with classical mechanics. This means that there will be no tunneling. But for ultrarelativistic particles, for all sorts of very deep and interesting reasons, the situation is different: they pass through the barrier no matter how high and wide it is. This is a very general and very interesting property, which we called Klein tunneling, because it is somehow remotely related to the so-called Klein paradox in quantum mechanics (I certainly won’t explain this now). Over time, it turned out that this is a very important thing. Three years later, this effect was experimentally confirmed. I was, of course, head over heels happy: this is the highest joy for a theorist - to correctly predict something. It is not very often that this succeeds at all.
Who confirmed it?
The first was Philip Kim's group at Columbia University in New York (they, by the way, were the main competitors of Andrey and Kostya in graphene matters). Now this has probably already been confirmed in dozens of works. But the main beauty of this work is that it explained why graphene is interesting in principle.
The fact is that in graphene, as in semiconductors, there are holes and there are electrons. In this case, the material can be easily switched from one conductivity to another - for example, from hole conductivity (when the main charge carriers are positively charged holes) to electron conductivity and vice versa. To do this, it is enough, say, to apply an external electrical voltage, in English called gate voltage. At the same time, in normal conditions graphene always contains internal inhomogeneities, that is, there are areas with electronic conductivity and there are areas with hole conductivity - such electron and hole puddles (). Why does this happen? This is due, for example, to the fact that graphene is two-dimensional, and any two-dimensional systems at any finite temperature experience strong fluctuations. So, if there were no Klein tunneling, which allows electrons to pass through hole regions and vice versa, then all the electrons in graphene would sit in these puddles and graphene itself would not be a conducting material.
Another important fact: In almost any other semiconductor material you cannot go from electronic conductivity to the hole continuously, you are sure to pass through the insulator area when the material stops conducting at all. There is no such region in graphene - this is also a consequence of various kinds of relativistic effects described in my work on the quantum minimum conductivity of graphene.
Be that as it may, all this suggests that graphene electronics cannot be built as an analogue of silicon or germanium electronics. In the simplest transistors, by applying voltage to the central region (for example, electronic), you can lock or unlock it. Because of Klein tunneling, you will never be able to lock a regular transistor in graphene. That is, the graphene transistor must be designed completely differently.
Together with my Manchester friends, I participated in some fundamental work in this area - how to properly make a graphene transistor. The best we could offer was the so-called vertical geometry. With this scheme, the current does not flow through the graphene sheet, but from one sheet to another ( and ).
I must say that all the other words that I said - the existence of minimal quantum conductivity, hole and electron puddles - are also related to some of my work. That is, from my point of view, I was able to significantly participate in the formation of the language for this new area, which, in general, everyone is now using. And I'm glad that the scientific community found these works important.
What is the current state of all this science? You say that in recent years you are actively doing this.
The condition is excellent. Graphene is just some kind of fairy tale for several reasons. Well, first of all, people are good ( laughs).
And secondly, a wonderful balance between theory and experiment, a real full-fledged collaboration. That is, as soon as some effect is predicted, it is immediately tested. Or, let's say, an experiment is conducted - and then theorists begin to explain the information received. We can say that all this activity around graphene is simply exemplary physics. If, for example, we compare it with another current fashionable area, where, in general, many people are already gradually moving from graphene - with the so-called topological insulators - then such a balance, in my opinion, has not yet been achieved. There, roughly speaking, there are a hundred (or a thousand) theorists per experimenter. Everyone’s imagination works, but there are not enough experiments to bring theorists down to Earth.
And yet, graphene is a fairly simple system, not like the same high-temperature superconductors. There are so many fancy things there: they have chemical formulas quite complex, and the crystal structure is complex - a million different factors. Therefore, in general, there are no special breakthroughs. Now - how long? - People have been poking around for 25 years, but we can’t say that we understood something important there, that we solved the problem. And in graphene, since the people are good, since theorists and experimenters interact remarkably well, and since the system is still relatively simple, the progress is colossal. On present moment at the level of the single-particle theory of graphene (the simplest model in which the interaction of charge carriers with each other is not considered), almost everything has already been done: a language has been developed, the main effects have been discovered. I even became a little bored, I admit, and I was thinking about moving to another area. But again, thanks to the fact that colossal progress in experimental technology, the quality of the samples has become so high that it has become possible to suppress all these puddles that I spoke about and which interfere with the observation of all sorts of subtle effects, to come very close to the so-called Dirac point, to the most interesting case, and many-particle effects began to be observed experimentally - effects that are significantly related precisely to the interaction of electrons with each other. And it's like again new world opened. That is, the future of graphene theory lies precisely in such many-particle effects - there are now a lot of interesting problems here.
You mentioned the Dirac point. Tell us more about her.
I hope your readers remember from school that one of the starting points of quantum mechanics was Niels Bohr's theory of the atom. One of the main provisions of this theory stated that electrons in an atom cannot have any energy, but only certain discrete energy levels. Now this has already been tested many times in practice - for example, in isolated systems (they can even be called “artificial atoms”), known as quantum dots, the energy spectrum is discrete (that is, it consists of individual values).
If we move on to solids, then the spectrum is more complex. In conventional semiconductors we are faced with this situation: some energy bands are completely filled, and some are completely empty. If we have a partially filled band of these allowed energies, it is a metal, a conductor. If some stripes are completely filled and others are empty, it is a semiconductor or an insulator. Graphene is completely unique because in its ground state it also has a completely filled band and a completely empty band, but there is no gap between them. And if you look at how it all looks, draw a picture of how this energy center is structured, then this filled strip can be represented as a kind of cone, on which the same cone stands on top. The most interesting place electron spectrum - this is the top of the cone. Well, if, as we know how to do in semiconductor physics and metal physics, we try to build some kind of model—we physicists say Hamiltonian—that describes such a situation, then it will be very similar to the Dirac Hamiltonian of relativistic quantum mechanics.
This point is called the Dirac point. If graphene is not doped (that is, we do not additionally push either electrons or holes into the graphene), then at this point there is the most interesting physics.
At this point very interesting electronic effects. One of the foundations of our understanding of solids and condensed matter in general (solids and liquids) is the theory of Fermi liquid, developed by the great Soviet physicist Lev Landau. Roughly speaking, this theory says that adding electrons to the equations of the one-electron theory of interaction does not lead to any new qualitative effects, that is, it is not very important - some parameters of the model simply change. Let's say, instead of one value of mass, magnetic moment, you need to consider others, and that's it. This is why the model with non-interacting electrons usually gives such a good approximation.
So, apparently, graphene near the Dirac point is an exception, that is, Landau’s Fermi liquid theory does not work there. And this, in general, has been known for quite a long time as a theoretical construction proposed long before the discovery of graphene by my friend and co-author Paco Guinea and other theorists in Spain. And recently all this was experimentally confirmed. And now, it seems to me, the main efforts of theorists working in the field of graphene should be focused on understanding this non-Fermi-liquid state, on understanding what kind of electron-electron interaction effects can be expected. This is such a very new, fresh area, extremely attractive to work in.
What kind of mathematics is there? Is there something interesting not only for physicists?
The one-electron theory is the Dirac equation, from a formal point of view linear equations in partial derivatives. There's beautiful mathematics there. Even mathematicians admit this - recently our guys (from our group) returned from St. Petersburg from a large conference on mathematical physics Days on Diffraction - 2013. For example, in order to build a serious, and not just a purely qualitative, mathematical theory of Klein tunneling, you need to use very beautiful, elegant mathematics - the so-called semiclassical approximation, but much more subtle than in the case of ordinary quantum mechanics. Just to take into account this Klein tunneling.
And if we are talking about many-particle effects in graphene, then we move to a completely different level, where we already need to use with all our might the complex methods of quantum particles and field theory, for example, the same methods that people from the theory of elementary particles use to understand, say , why there are no quarks in a free state. And, again, I am involved in some of this work, I collaborate with a theoretical group at ITEP in Moscow, where we are trying to apply these methods of elementary particle theory to the study of many-particle effects in graphene. That is, in general, there is mathematics for every taste, starting from classical mathematical physics of the 19th century, research differential equations in partial derivatives, and ending with modern sophisticated mathematics and numerical methods, which are used in so-called fundamental physics. In general, already in our first works with Andrei and Kostya there was a connection with modern mathematics, the same geometry and topology. Well, of course, not exactly today’s, but the one that was about 50 years ago. The Atiyah-Singer theorem, for example. And this is already good - in physics solid, for example, mathematics from 150 years ago is usually enough.
A few questions aside. It is well known that you are a believer - an Orthodox Christian. Does this not bother you when communicating with foreign colleagues? They say that there are many atheists among modern physicists.
I can say that this does not create any problems for me in communicating with colleagues, at least in the West. I think everyone knows, and I don’t really hide it. I would even say that the typical attitude is one of kindness and disinterest. Most people, I think, simply don’t care, because a scientist should be assessed by his scientific work. If you can talk to me about any interesting science, so they will talk to me about interesting science. These are topics of a kind that are generally not particularly customary to discuss publicly. You discuss them with close friends and so on. I have close friends who are physicists, and they themselves may hold some other views, but in any case, they treat my religious views with complete respect and understanding. While I was still in Russia, together with my co-author, colleague Valya Irkhin, I published two books about science and religion - “Charters of Heaven: 16 Chapters about Science and Faith” and “Wings of the Phoenix. Introduction to Quantum Mythophysics" ( both books are on lib.ru - and - approx. "Tapes.ru").
It’s just that people generally don’t think much in this direction, but at the same time, for example, I can say with great pride that Kostya Novoselov, when he was not yet Nobel laureate, and he was still a very young man, he told me that he read “Wings of the Phoenix” and it made a strong impression on him. Of course, I don’t want to beat my chest and say that it was me, me, I who helped him become a Nobel laureate, but in any case, reading my pseudoscientific books clearly did not harm him. So the attitude here is calm.
As for how I personally combine this, it seems to me that the most important thing here is that you still need to understand: you shouldn’t mix levels. We are not only physicists, we are human beings after all, we have different problems, we have different types of experiences - and experiences everyday life, and some kind of internal, spiritual experience, what is sometimes called mystical experience, and the experience of our scientific work, we communicate with women, we communicate with friends, we communicate with children, that is, we live multifaceted, and I don’t think that, let’s say , my religious views somehow directly influence my scientific work, or vice versa, or some of my literary pursuits. It’s just that a man is multifaceted, as Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky said, “a broad man,” well, and it all fits in calmly. To be honest, I don’t have any particular problems about this.
How do you feel about the opening of the Department of Theology at MEPhI?
Basically, if you remember the joke about Vovochka: I would like your problems, Maria Ivanovna, - so, my attitude is about the same. As far as I've read about this story, it really wasn't done very well - not because we're talking about about faith or something else, but simply, as they say, I didn’t understand it myself, I only read on the Internet that the authorities there twisted their arms, that they did it against the wishes of the people, that they did not take into account opinions, and so on. That is, tyranny is bad. If in this case there was tyranny, then this is bad. And if, as they say, this was done by consent (maybe this is not the case at MEPhI), then why, well, there is a department, let whoever wants to study there, whoever doesn’t want to, don’t study there. I don't see any problem with this at all. We have a faculty of theology; by the way, we are actually a Catholic university. So what? Well, Catholic.
Is it named after a saint?
Holy Radbod, yes. In front of our main administrative building there is a monument to St. Thomas Aquinas. This doesn't bother me at all. I understand that I am a believer, what can you take from me, but I think that most of my colleagues are atheists and this does not particularly bother them either. Everything is fine. Everything's just fine. I understand perfectly well that in Russia this is a terribly painful issue, simply because it is extremely politicized, firstly. Secondly, apparently some of the older generation still have memories of the forced brainwashing by Marxism-Leninism in Soviet times, I can tell a lot about this - I was, after all, forced to graduate from the university of Marxism- Leninism, philosophical department. I have a diploma, all this wasted time, it still hiccups.
But, on the other hand, the result in my case was exactly the opposite of the desired one, not only did I not become a Marxist-Leninist, I became an idealist, a believer, a sharp anti-Marxist, that is, in the place of those who are trying to instill some kind of religious, Orthodox, Yes, even atheistic propaganda of any kind - I would think about it. If this is done in order to curry favor with the authorities and put a tick somewhere, then why discuss this - well, bestiality and bestiality.
If someone sincerely thinks that in this way people can be moved in some desired direction, I will give a wonderful counterexample. I was brainwashed by this Marxism-Leninism, washed into obscurantism, into idealism, into clericalism, as Vladimir Ilyich put it. I think that such zeal in planting Orthodoxy will lead to exactly the same results, they will simply produce not just atheists, but militant atheists - as an Orthodox person, it saddens me to think about this prospect. From these two points of view, that in general any propaganda always achieves goals that are directly opposite to those stated, and that tyranny is not good and people’s opinions should be asked, I have a negative attitude towards this story. If we simply talk about the coexistence of the department of theology and the department of nuclear physics and any other within one educational institution, then I’ve been working in such an institution for nine years, I’m head over heels happy and I see absolutely no problem in this.
"Themes"
"News"
Russian scientist wins Spinoza Prize
Professor of theoretical physics from the Dutch University of Nijmegen Mikhail Katsnelson became the winner of the most prestigious scientific awards in the Netherlands, the Spinoza Prize. Highly appreciated colleagues were honored with Katsnelson’s work on graphene research. I want to try to solve a number of problems fundamental to physics. Funding for research of this kind is usually impossible to find, but the Spinoza Prize gives you freedom,” the scientist told reporters.
link: http://www.utro.ru/news/2013/06/11/1124522.shtml
A native of Russia received the Spinoza Prize in Physics
“Mikhail Katsnelson, professor of physics at the Institute of Molecules and Materials at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands, was awarded for using ideas from particle physics in the study of graphene. In collaboration with Andrei Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, he proved that graphene, associated with solid-state physics, can be described by a number of concepts of theoretical physics,” the portal reports.
The scientist showed how the behavior of charged graphene particles can be described using models of relativistic quantum mechanics. In a paper written in collaboration with Andrei Geim, Katsnelson predicted the effects of Klein tunneling in graphene and the stretching of the graphene membrane, which were soon demonstrated in experiments.
link: http://www.ukrinform.ua
Polit.ru: “Physicist Mikhail Katsnelson was awarded the Spinoza Prize”
Mikhail Katsnelson, a native of Russia, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor of Theoretical Physics at Radboud University, became a laureate highest award Netherlands – Spinoza Prize 2013. It is awarded annually Scientific Society Netherlands (Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research). “Mikhail is one of the founding fathers of graphene research.
His theoretical research underlies almost all discoveries and predictions about the properties of graphene,” says the annotation for the award. The announcement of the names of the 2013 laureates was made on June 10, and the awards ceremony itself will take place in the fall. This is reported on the website of this organization.
link: http://www.nanometer.ru/2013/06/11/mihail_kacnelson_332273. html
A scientist who left Russia received a prize of 2.5 million euros
The scientist who left Russia was awarded a prize of 2.5 million euros. Professor of theoretical physics from the Dutch University of Nijmegen Mikhail Katsnelson became the winner of the most prestigious scientific awards in the Netherlands, the Spinoza Prize. M. Katsnelson’s work on graphene research was highly appreciated by his colleagues.
A message from the AlphaGalileo Foundation, the founder of the Spinoza Prize, notes that M. Katsnelson’s publications on the properties of graphene have been cited by other scientists more than 12 thousand times, and the book he wrote, “Graphene: Carbon in Two Dimensions,” is even called the “graphene Bible.”More at the beginning of 2000 M. Katsnelson predicted a number of properties of graphene, including stretching of the graphene membrane and the so-called Klein tunneling in graphene. Both effects were then discovered experimentally.
link:
Deputy artistic director, producer
After graduating from the Gnessin Institute in 1976, he entered one of the best orchestras in the world - the Grand Symphony Orchestra of the USSR State Television and Radio, later the Bolshoi Orchestra named after. P.I. Tchaikovsky, which has been led by the outstanding Russian conductor Vladimir Fedoseev for 40 years.
During his 15 years of work at the BSO, he met famous musicians and journalists, which helped in his further work as a producer, which he has been doing for the last 25 years.
Another violinist...
Worked with V. I. Fedoseev for almost 20 years as a violinist, director, producer
Rudolf Barshai, after a long absence, conducted in Russia, the producer was M. Katznelson.
From 1991 to 1994 he worked in the Russian National Orchestra - the first private domestic orchestra - under the direction of Mikhail Pletnev, who made a brilliant career as a pianist and conductor.
Only the best soloists played with Pletnev's orchestra (Mikhail Pletnev and Viktor Tretyakov)
On the left is M. Katsnelson with his wife Elena, on the right is journalist and TV presenter S. Nikolaevich with the first producer of the RNO T. Sukhacheva, in the center is a young American conductor
In this orchestra, M. Katsnelson ceased to be a performing violinist and became the director of this group. The orchestra had just been created, its connections in the artistic and journalistic world became in demand, and its administrative and production activities began. Working in a private orchestra taught me how to collaborate with sponsors and investors. It was at RNO that he gained invaluable experience working with banks and large companies willing to invest money in creative projects.
Now it’s not a violin in your hands, but documents
With Austrian violinist Julian Rachlin at the festival “Violinist for All Seasons”
With Yuri Bashmet in the artistic Great Hall of the Conservatory after the premiere of the concert for viola, cello and chamber orchestra by Alexei Rybnikov
With Nikolai Petrov. At his festival "Kremlin Musical" he was the director 
Zuben Metta with his wife, meeting at Sheremetyevo airport 
Ekaterina Mechetina is the first performer of A. Rybnikov’s works: Concerto Grosso No. 1,2 and piano sonatas No. 1
This experience helped him when he worked for several years with Boris Belenky on the project “Crystal Turandot”, Alexander Krauter at the artistic agency “Krauterconcert” and People’s Artist of the USSR Nikolai Petrov at the international festival “Kremlin Musical”. In these projects he managed to attract not only finance, but also designers, administrators, many musicians and artists with whom he had collaborated before.
In 2004, Katsnelson created the artistic agency "Concert City" and conducted several major projects, including international festival to the 80th anniversary of the outstanding violinist Julian Sitkovetsky “A Violinist for All Seasons”, to which world stars were invited: Julian Rakhlin (violin, Austria), Jeannine Jensen (violin, Holland), Alena Baeva (violin, Russia), Liana Isakadze (violin , Georgia), Alexander Rudin (cello, Russia), Bella Davidovich (piano, USA), Dmitry Sitkovetsky (conductor, violin, UK).
At the Krauterconcert agency, he had the opportunity to meet and collaborate with such personalities as James Levine, artistic director of the Metropolitan Opera, Zuben Metta - chief conductor of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Kathleen Battle - the brilliant soprano of the Metropolitan Opera, Evgeniy Kissin - pianist of the world and of course collaborate with the Chereshnevy Les festival and its founder Mikhail Kusnirovich, who created the most creative Moscow art project.
At the Chereshnevy Les festival, his collaboration with Alexey Rybnikov began. The premiere of Symphony No. 5 “Resurrection of the Dead” under the direction of conductor Teodor Currentzis, later they managed to release a disc on the Melodiya company with a video recording of this concert. And a concert in the hall named after. Tchaikovsky and the DVD were a success with the public and critics, and he received an offer from Alexey Rybnikov to begin working with his symphonic projects as a producer. In recent years, several significant concerts, audio and video recordings with the music of Alexei Rybnikov have been held in the best halls of Moscow and with the best conductors and soloists: conductors Valery Gergiev, Vladimir Fedoseev, Alexander Sladkovsky, Mark Gorenstein, soloists - Yuri Bashmet, Alexander Knyazev, Alena Baeva , Ekaterina Mechetina, Boris Andrianov, and many others.
Kathleen Battle - Metropolitan Opera star
With Evgeny Kissin after a triumphal concert
With Maya Plisetskaya at R. Shchedrin’s “Self-Portrait” festival dedicated to the composer’s seventieth birthday
Since 2008, he began working with the Alexei Rybnikov Theater and over the years managed to organize theater tours to Israel, the Baltic countries, Finland, the USA and Canada, hold several of Rybnikov’s original concerts with music for theater and cinema (conductor Sergei Skripka), as well as two anniversary concerts in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory with the participation of the State Symphony Orchestra. Svetlanov and the Moscow Symphony Orchestra “Russian Philharmonic”.
With Austrian conductor and pianist Justus Franz and cellist Alexander Knyazev, the first performer of Rybnikov’s concerto
With Vladimir Spivakov at the Chereshnevy Les Festival
With Mstislav Rostropovich and timpanist Valery Polivanov at the Self-Portrait Festival dedicated to the 70th anniversary of R. Shchedrin
Thanks to his long-standing contact with the Melodiya company, M. Katsnelson was able to release several discs with recordings of Rybnikov’s works: Concerto Grosso No. 1 "Blue Bird" and Concerto Grosso No. 2 “Northern Sphinx”, Symphony No. 5 “Resurrection of the Dead”, concert for cello and orchestra (soloist - Alexander Knyazev, conductor - Alexander Sladkovsky), an anthology of piano music by Soviet composers, as well as remakes of two famous rock operas “Juno and Avos” and “The Star and Death of Joaquino Murrieta” "on vinyl discs.
With Alexander Sladkovsky, who has made a brilliant career as a conductor and artistic director
With pianist Irina Schnittke at a concert by Evgeny Kissin
With Zoya Boguslavskaya at the presentation of the Triumph Prize to Alexey Rybnikov
Since 2017, M.N. Katsnelson has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Russian Authors Society (Chairman - Andrey Borisovich Krichevsky).
1976-1991 – Big Symphony Orchestra of the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, later the Bolshoi Symphony Orchestra named after. P.I. Tchaikovsky (artistic director, People's Artist of the USSR - Vladimir Fedoseev) - orchestra artist
1991-1994 – Russian National Orchestra (artistic director, People’s Artist of the Russian Federation – Mikhail Pletnev) – orchestra artist, director
1994-1996 – “Muses of Freedom” – “Crystal Turandot” (theater award, artistic director – Boris Belenky) – executive director
1994-1999 – BSO named after. Tchaikovsky (artistic director, People's Artist of the USSR - Vladimir Fedoseev) - director
1999-2001 – State Symphony Orchestra “Young Russia” (artistic director, People’s Artist of the Russian Federation – Mark Gorenshtein) – director
2002-2004 – “Krauterconcert” (General Director – Alexander Krauter) – producer
2004-2006 – “Musical Kremlin” – international festival (artistic director, People’s Artist of the USSR – Nikolai Petrov) – director
2006 to present Workshop under the direction of Alexey Rybnikov, Alexey Rybnikov Theater - deputy artistic director, producer
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I made a reservation in advance: what he does is understood by hardly a few hundred people in the world. Let us add on our own that he is also a real knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion. And laureate of the Lenin Komsomol Prize. Well, what do you think Mikhail Katsnelson does? Well, of course, graphene!
Mikhail Katsnelson is a physicist, he is originally from Magnitogorsk, where he studied at school. And in Chelyabinsk we crossed paths at the “Bright Past” award ceremony (we remind you that it is awarded to our famous fellow countrymen who work abroad).
So, discussing graphene at a layman level with a professor, of course, is not our business. For those who don’t know, graphene is, so to speak, a two-dimensional material. Carbon becomes graphene when it is “smeared” into a layer exactly one atom thick. And then the material manifests many amazing properties, which are not characteristic of carbon at all. It is planned to make subminiature electronic components from graphene. That’s it, you will never see the word graphene again in this interview!
And we talked about the activities of Katsnelson, a popularizer of science. In collaboration with Valentin Irkhin, our interlocutor wrote a book that is surprisingly unlike a physics textbook: “Charters of Heaven. 16 chapters about science and faith." In the “Charter”, “top-level” physicists, so to speak, try to reconcile the conceptual apparatus of religions and natural sciences. What is a “miracle” from the point of view of a scientific observer? Don't the laws of nature and religious laws contradict each other? Does the Gospel deny the evolutionary process? The book is in the public domain, you can start by skimming it.
Mikhail Iosifovich, tell me, how did you find time in your schedule to write a book that is unlikely to bring dividends or material benefits? Or will he bring it?
Of course not... The story is like this. It was 2000 or 2001, I was in Yekaterinburg then. In 1998, my teacher, a very important person for me, academician Sergei Vasilyevich Valtsovsky, died, and after him there was left the manuscript of the book “Modern Natural Science Picture of the World,” a kind of textbook on natural science for humanities specialties. Sergei Vasilyevich’s relatives turned to me and my collaborator Valentin Irkhin with a request to finish the book; there was an unfinished section on the relationship between natural science and religion, art... I, of course, was terribly surprised, because I considered and still consider myself a very poorly educated person in the humanities. But Valya Irkhin convinced me: let's try.
We went through an insane amount of books, finished writing a chapter, and while we were doing this, we got hooked and decided to write a whole book.
I wouldn’t find time for this now! It’s not that I didn’t receive any dividends, but my colleagues were suspicious of our activities, and they weren’t very encouraged. Then, in the early 2000s, it was difficult to do science in Russia, and I then thought that since I could not do scientific work at the proper level, then I would engage in popularization and teaching. Now I can’t write anything like that, I don’t have time, but then I did it with great enthusiasm.
There are so many different sources cited in Charters of Heaven - from the Bible and other religious texts to modern science fiction, Ursula Le Guin, for example. Were you in charge of science fiction?
Valya Irkhin is a completely unique specialist. He is a physicist by profession, but is well versed in the canonical texts of various religions. You can always get advice from him on any translation of the Bible into any language of any era. He studied Indian texts, and a variety of them... so he prepared a selection of quotes from canonical texts. And I prepared science fiction, Vysotsky’s songs, and so on. This is how the text was written together, purely literary, I wrote more.
Have you received reviews of the book: “What are these physicists allowing themselves to do?! How can they judge such things? Maybe crazy people wrote to you?
No, they weren't written by crazy people. But fellow physicists were very suspicious. I haven’t heard any serious feedback from humanities scholars, but some have taken a closer look at our writings, perhaps even in more detail than they deserve. In particular, Professor Miroshnikov (editor's note: Yuri Ivanovich Miroshnikov - at that time the head of the department of philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy and Law of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences) wrote two deep reviews and invited us to participate in collections scientific works his department. And I even gave a few lectures for graduate students on the philosophy of science. On the contrary, someone thought that it was all lightweight, but people are delicate, these reviews did not reach me.
My eye caught the chapter “Miracle”. I understand what you, as a scientist, mean by this word: very unlikely events. Do you believe in real miracles?
The difficult question is how to relate to miracles. Seven billion people live on Earth, with dozens and hundreds of events happening every day. Is it a miracle that when it rains, a single drop falls exactly on the head of some nail sticking out of the fence? Well, there are a lot of drops, some will definitely fall in! You can relate more deeply. In particular, the famous psychologist Jung developed the concept of synchronicity, as opposed to causation. The vast majority of my colleagues have a negative attitude towards such ideas, because miracles are not built into modern painting peace. For a physicist this makes no sense; I don’t know what to do with it. But as a human... many events can be interpreted as miracles. Is it necessary?
What surprised you most in the world of science, technology, and technology in 2017?
There is a joke that the Chukchi is not a reader, the Chukchi is a writer! In this sense, I am absorbed in my own work, so I am biased here. There are certain tastes, favorite topics... It is difficult to look impartially. But in particular, I had several visits, several conversations, after which I reconsidered my attitude towards quantum computers. Now it seems to me that there is something serious behind this.
Note ed: a quantum computer is a hypothetical device that uses a fundamentally different computational logic, different from modern computers, based on postulates quantum physics. It will (theoretically) perform some tasks trillions of times faster than current supercomputers.
What does the title of Dutch knight oblige you to? Or maybe there are some benefits, like, you can skip the line at a store or pharmacy?
No, there are no benefits! But on special occasions you must wear an order bar. I may be taking knighthood too seriously. I am a Russian physicist, a citizen of Russia, but at the same time I am a member of the European Academy, here is my badge. And in this capacity, I believe this is the responsibility that I have assumed: to contribute to improving relations between Russia and Europe, especially in the field of scientific cooperation. Although I am not a diplomat, not a politician, to the best of my ability. Sometimes Dutch newspapers interview me, which is good: here, a Russian physicist, you can talk to him about this and that.
What do you answer when they ask why you don’t live in Russia?
You see, unfortunately, I cannot work in my homeland at the required level. I visit Russia constantly, I work with the Ural Federal University, and not on paper, but in reality we are working. It was in the Netherlands that I blossomed as a physicist. Of course, it’s a shame, but work keeps me going. What will I do there when I retire? I don't know yet.
