Twenty years later

Porthos extended his hand, took the letter and read in a trembling voice: “The Queen wishes to speak with Monsieur d'Artagnan, whom she asks to follow the bearer of this letter.”
“Well,” said Porthos, “I don’t see anything special here.”
“And I see, and a lot,” objected d’Artagnan. “If they called me, it means things are bad.” Think what had to happen for the queen to remember me twenty years later!
“True,” Porthos agreed.
A. Dumas. Twenty Years Later, Chapter 6

On August 20, 1990, 33-year-old me left for the United States to work for “a year or two” - with my wife, four children, six backpacks of children’s junk and a hundred dollars in my pocket. There was an idea to save money for a cooperative cottage; They even made the first payment - they borrowed a thousand rubles from their parents. The cooperative collapsed, the money was tight, and there was nowhere to go back - the salary of a research assistant wouldn’t be enough for five children, and I’m not much of a businessman. As a result, American life began - with six visa extensions within three years, a long search for a normal salary, working extremely hard, receiving the coveted tenure by the age of forty, monstrous payments for colleges, a named department and the first serious illnesses by fifty... Everything is like with people.

I constantly maintained close contacts with my homeland in a good sense, that is, with friends. And the rest of my homeland has mostly forgotten me. Three times, it seems, I was invited to Russia to give reports, and I came. Several unfamiliar compatriots referred to me. But I have heard more than once that my Hirsch and articles in Natura are all Western lack of spirituality, but there is no Real Depth in my science. In 2002, he published an article “how can we organize Russian science”1 - no reaction. In a word, parallel spaces.

And suddenly, in July 2010, like a bolt from the blue, there was a proposal to apply for megagrants. The competition itself is very similar to the one I proposed eight years ago, although it is less well thought out. I filed it - it was a stupid, simple matter - and I won. They say they assessed the applications fairly... Amazing! “Your project is extremely important for our country,” Minister Fursenko wrote to each of the competition winners. So, brother, let's go...

The future will show whether this is serious - and for how long... And whether they remembered me too late - ten years ago I would have been much more useful. Although many academicians and doctors have been working for the benefit of science for up to a hundred years. And d'Artagnan, twenty years later, and then ten years later, fully justified his trust. Should I also demand the rank of captain - otherwise the Serpukhov military registration and enlistment office dismissed me as a senior officer...

Alexey Kondrashov,
Professor at the Institute of Biological Sciences
and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
University of Michigan USA,
one of the winners of the megagrant competition

1 A. Kondrashov. The key figure is the head of the lab! “Knowledge is power”, 2002, No. 4, p. 60-66 ( www.trv-science.ru/2010/12/07/klyuchevaya-figura-zavlab/ )