Re: A historical episode

[Stephen Speicher <sjs@COMPBIO.CALTECH.EDU>]

On Thu, 7 Aug 2003, Ludwik Kowalski wrote:

> Academician E. Kruglyakov, who is a nuclear physicist, wrote a
> book (in 2001) which I am now reading....
> "I had a conversation with I. Golovin, the deputy director of
> Kurchatov=92s Institute. He said that one day Beria [the secret
> police chief] suggested to I. V. Kurchatov that idealistic
> physics, such as quantum mechanics and theory of relativity,
> should be purged."

This sort of behavior has deep historical roots in Soviet Russia.
Here is quoted story from George Gamow, followed by a brief
analysis which I wrote for a guessing contest on another list.

******************************************************************
    "Here is a story about the trouble which arose in DDDD
     when I defended Einstein's point of view, according to
     which the 'world ether' (at least in the sense it was
     understood in classical physics) does not exist....
     This volume contained the word: _Ether_ (Light-), with
     a long article written by a certain Gessen. We all knew
     Comrade Gessen very well: he was the 'red director' of
     the Physics Institute in Moscow University and his job
     was to see that [no one] did not deviate into
     idealistic marshes from the straight path of
     dialectical materialism.... Comrade Gessen knew some
     physics but was mostly interested in photography and
     made very good portraits of the pretty coeds.... But,
     continued Comrade Gessen ...  [the] World ether must
     exist and must possess the properties of all other
     common material substances.... We had a good laugh at
     Gessen's naive stupidity, and decided to send him a
     joking teleletter.... The text, which was, of course,
     originally in Russian, read as follows:"

         "Being inspired by your article on the
          light-ether, we are enthusiastically pushing
          forward to prove its material existence. Old
          Albert is an idealistic idiot!

         "We call for your leadership in the search
          for caloric, flogiston, and electric fluids.

          A. AAAAA, B. BBBBBB, A. Bronstein Z. Genazvali
          S.  Grilokishnikov

    "We expected that Gessen would blow up, but his
     explosion exceeded by far all our expectations. He took
     out teleletter to the Communist Academy in Moscow and
     accused us of being in open revolt against the
     principles of dialectical materialism and the Marxist
     ideology.... We were to be tried as saboteurs of Soviet
     science.... We were found guilty of anti-Revolutionary
     activity by a jury of machine-shop workers of the
     institute."


As John Zinni correctly identified, these words were written by
George Gamow in his autobiography "My World Line," _The Viking
Press_, 1970. John also idenfied the "B" signatory as none other
than famed Lev Davidovitch Landau, at that time teaching at the
Polytechnic Instuitute.  The date "DDDD" given by Gamow was 1925,
but as Ilja Schmelzer discovered for himself, the actual date was
1931. Gamow had mis-remembered.  Double-A also identified a
"teleletter" as a sort of fax, where a special blank was used to
write a letter, and the letter was delivered over the teletype
system, received in the original handwriting.

Reading Gamow's account of the Soviet persecution leaves me with
a dual sense: one of horror at the state intervention, trial, and
penalties, along with a farcical sense -- the jury which judged
the scientists were the machine-shop workers of the institute!
(A bit reminiscent of the anti-relativists making judgments on
this group.) Two of the signatories were graduate students, and
they lost their stipend and had to leave town. Landau and
Bronstein were dismissed from their teaching positions at the
Polytechnic.  There was also a proposal to give the whole bunch a
"minus five" punishment, a ban on living in the five largest
cities of the USSR, but that punishment was not meted out.

The push to only accept relativity in the form of a classical
ether, this philosophical constriction based on the Marxist
dialectical materialism, was just one instance of the State
dictating what was permitted scientifically, or not. Another area
was in quantum mechanics, where Schroedinger's approach was
hailed as permissible while Heisenberg's matrix mechanics was
condemned as being antimaterialistic. Gamow also experienced this
first-hand.

Gamow was asked to deliver a lecture on quantum mechanics to the
House of Scientists. As he began to discuss Heisenberg's
uncertainty relations, a dialectical materialistic attached to
the institution stopped Gamow's lecture and dismissed the
audience. Afterwards Gamow was told to never speak of the
uncertainty relations in public again.

Gamow recalls that later the restriction was temporarily released
when some goivernment official referred to the relations in an
article in Pravda. Gamow says the article was titled something
like "Should One Use the Philosophy of Dialectical Materialism in
an Instruction Book on How to Catch Crawfish in the Rivers and
Lakes of the Soviet Union?" As I said: horror, and farce.
******************************************************************

--
Stephen
speicher@caltech.edu

Ignorance is just a placeholder for knowledge.

Printed using 100% recycled electrons.
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