Physicist Boris Nemtsov

But I don’t remember how I met Borea. So much that was later, I remember, but this is not, I can’t remember. Somehow he gradually entered my life. We were peers and both studied at the GSU radio faculty, even though I'm on the course earlier. I remember how at first I paid attention to him from the side, and it was impossible not to draw: huge, beautiful, self -confident, as we call it now, cool. In general, he did not care what he was wearing in some torn sweaters. Once in the cold he came to a lecture in felt boots. The girls loved him anyway, or maybe for that too. I remember them with his first serious love-Inca “Hat”, it was a stunning couple, as if from some foreign film ... And then we still met at some point. Maybe through Pavlik Miloslavsky or Tolik Abrashkin (they were friends then, Tolik then, I remember, composed a song with the refrain “Pavly, Samblic and Nemtsov”), and maybe through the seminars on non -linear physics that Ippanovtsy and Tolya Basovich and Tolya Fabrikant organized in our senior courses. Despite the playboy appearance and habits, Bori had an absolutely outstanding head and an obvious passion for science, it was felt right away. After the university ended, we somehow got closer even more. And at work - as it turned out, we were attracted to close things in science - and tennis often played in Sverdlov’s kindergarten, hung together ... And then I decided to marry a girl whom Borya knew well, she was the closest girlfriend of the very “hat” with whom Borya had long broken up. I remember how he “blessed me” for this: firstly, she, says, smart, and most importantly, not a bitch that is extremely rare in a beautiful woman. And now 30 years old, as every day (well, almost everyone) I am convinced of his rightness and thank him for this parting words.

In science, Borya has always been interested in tasks associated with dynamics, movement, and instructions. Now I already retroactively thought that his indefatigable human character, Drive, probably affected this. As examples, I can mention a series of work on the instability and emission of waves by particles and objects moving with super -light velocities in optically dense media, in plasma, coherent radiation of acoustic waves with overheated steam, the effects of the echo with non -linear interaction of waves and particles in plasma. He worked a lot, quickly and easily wrote articles, and already in 1985 defended himself. Somewhere in the second half of the 1980s, we began to think with him together over one fascinating task about the spread of localized indignations in unstable shift movements, met at lunchtime, sat on the windowsill next to the nirfine canteen and wrote “formulas on the knees”. Pasted by back and forth colleagues and were surprised: “Are you still sitting? Well, well ... ".

Then we went to Moscow together to talk about this work at the seminar with Ginzburg. I got there in the first (and last) time, and he had been to Ginzburg before, because he was considered a direct heir to the famous school of Ginzburg in Gorky-through his scientific leaders Nikolai Denisov and Vilien Aidman, who were his (Ginzburg) direct students. Both the atmosphere of this unique seminar, and all our joint work is one of my most vivid scientific memories, although, unfortunately, our article on this topic, in essence, did not see the light, was released only as the Ippan Preplant. I gathered in America, took up other tasks, Borya became interested in politics, so we left this matter ...

In the 1990s, our paths dispersed for obvious reasons. I did not come to Russia then, Borya made a dizzying political career, and I was embarrassed to look for contact with him, I did not want to compromise him with “foreign ties”, nor to create a false impression that I needed something from him, and, I think, it is not reasonable that at that time he had an extremely many new “old friends”. And then zero began, Borya flew from all posts, and I began to occasionally look into Russia. And we “found”, began to communicate again, not often, of course, but still we saw each other three times over the years, sometimes they called back and corresponded. What struck me at the first meeting after a long break, the year, probably 2004, is how little it has changed. The same cheerful, gambling, loud, not embarrassed in expressions, and most importantly, the same warm and bright person. I remembered everything and everyone, I was interested in everyone, we chatted as if there were no more stormy ten years than just not filled with both of us. It was extremely pleasant to find him like this.

When the war in Ukraine began, Borya was horrified. I carefully followed his posts on Facebook, and a couple of times we discussed it with him “in PM”. Although, unlike many others, Borya in both PM and Publisha said, in essence, one and the same thing, he did not hide his opinions and did not curse his soul. So he wrote that his country was “oo ... ate” that he has no hope for her quickly recovery, but he is not going to leave Russia either. He believed that his reputation was put on the map and leave was to lose it. It was impossible to convince him of this. Yes, and he loved Russia, he really loved, he liked to live there. And his children are all there, both mom and women loved by him. There was a real man in everything.

Naturally, I had great concerns for his safety, but I still hoped that the pressure would increase gradually, like on Navalny. What happened could not imagine in a terrible dream. And still I can’t believe that he is not. Bori had such a favorite expression in the 1980s, "enchanting hopelessness." Hopelessness is what I feel now. Only she is not at all enchanting. Very hard. Very.

Leo Tsimring

Leo Tsimring ( Biocircuits.ucsd.edu/lev ) was born in 1959 in Saratov, from 1963 to 1991 he lived in Nizhny Novgorod (Gorky), from 1992 in San Diego (USA), has been working at the University of California. In 1980, he graduated from the Radiophysics Faculty of Gorky State University and entered the Institute of Applied Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences, was engaged in the dynamics of internal waves in the ocean and the instructions of hydrodynamic movements. In 1985 he defended his thesis and continued to work in Ippan. Since the beginning of the 1990s, he began to engage in nonlinear dynamics, chaos theory, synchronization, self-education of complex spatio-temporal structures. For a number of years, he was interested in the dynamics of granular media and, together with his colleague Igor Anson (also a graduate of the GSU and former Ippanist), wrote a monograph under the name “Granular Patterns” on this subject. For the past ten years, he has been engaged in biological physics, studies the dynamics of intracellular processes. The author of more than 160 scientific works, 4 patents. Active member of the American physical society.