Translated material
Stop the loss of the brain
In Moscow, the laureates of the Enlightener Prize are named
The atmosphere at the Enlightener ceremony on November 24, 2011 was festive and unifying. Scientists, journalists, book publishers, having run away for several hours from their files, papers, affairs and bustle, gathered in a cozy theater center on a passionate in order to greet the laureates, and just talk.
The ceremony began with the performance of the founder of the Dynasty Foundation and the Enlightener Prize Dmitry Borisovich Zimin. He announced that it was decided to award the special prizes for the popularization of science to the “enlightener from God”, the famous popularizer of science Sergey Petrovich Kapitsa, as well as the magazine “Around the World”, who celebrates his 150th anniversary this year. On his anniversary, the magazine held a very interesting “Festival of Science” as part of the newly completed book Fair of Non/Fiction in Moscow.
The presenter of the evening, a literary critic, the observer of the Echo of Moscow radio station Nikolai Alexandrov greeted the editor -in -chief Sergei Parkhomenko, who went on stage, very peculiarly: “Let us honor the memory of a wonderful magazine“ Around the World ”!” Parkhomenko instantly reacted to the unexpected replica of the host like this: “While they carry a wreath, I will say. Did Gavrilov write the script? " (Alexander Gavrilov - co -chair of the Organizing Committee of the Prize. - Ed.).
Everyone began to laugh, and Parkhomenko continued more seriously: “In fact, in the life of every person it would be an amazing event if he ended up inside this wonderful“ train ”, which has been traveling for 150 years and suddenly you are involved in him. Either you go on him, or you lie under him, or you accidentally ran through to him the way ... I am completely happy that in my journalistic fate these several years of involvement in this wonderful event - a magazine that read a Tolstoy, in which Chekhov tried unsuccessfully ... and this magazine will live forever, and it is worth living forever. Such magazines really appear in each country one at a time. ”
The editor-in-chief of the magazine “Around the World”, which since January 2012 reports the reins of Masha Hessen, ended his speech with the statement that the Russian book publishing in the popular science region lives from the “Enlightener” to the “Enlightener”, and also said that 125 subscriptions to the magazine “Around the World” will go to Russian libraries along with winning books.
Another laureate of the Special Prime “Enlightener” - Sergei Petrovich Kapitsa - the hall met with ovation and getting up. “We see one of the great people!” Zimin exclaimed and emphasized that the Laureate's statuette was written “Enlightener from God”.
Kapitsa was very touched by the warm reception of the hall, he thanked his colleagues for the high honor and said that many years ago it was a very difficult decision for the popularization of science on television. He also recalled that even 2500 years ago, Aristotle at the very beginning of his “metaphysics” wrote that “all people by nature strive for knowledge.” “And this phrase is worthy to remind it. Therefore, I simply fulfill the beings from the great ancient thinkers, and you help me in this matter. I think that every person is always pleased to recognize what he is doing, ” Sergey Petrovich emphasized.
By tradition, the beginning of which was laid last year, the club of scientific journalists also awarded his special prize. Its representative Olga Blagodnya called the laureate book-she turned out to be the Laboratory of Red Yar. Scientific answers to fantastic questions. " From Krasnoyarsk, only two representatives of the large author’s collective were able to come for the prize-biologist Yegor Zeroeev and the project manager of the book by Anna Yakovlev (one of the authors was the deputy chief editor of the Trv-hunger Mikhail Gelfand).
Presenting the laureate book, Olga noted that she had “many virtues, but perhaps the main thing that predetermined our choice is that it is somewhat similar to a newspaper or a magazine. Under one cover in it, articles of different authors are collected, who are united by two things: nanubes of objects of scientific research and geographical place of work. In addition, as in the media, sometimes they have to sacrifice details for the sake of the overall picture, however, despite this, the authors managed to simply and interestingly talk about the problems of modern science, having built the presentation as answers to questions of schoolchildren. ”
She also emphasized that “in this book between readers and scientists there are no intermediaries - scientific journalists, and researchers themselves tell about scientific problems.” On the sidelines, Yegor and Anna said that there is active work on the preparation of the second part of the book on cosmos research.
Everyone was eager to find out who will become the main "enlighteners" of the year. Before the ceremony, Yevgeny Bunimovich, a member of the jury, said that disputes about who would become the winner were unusually gestured. His colleague in a high Areopagus, linguist Maxim Krongauz, who, speaking at the ceremony, also noted him, noted that the jury meeting ended about an hour ago. “Each of the books had fans among the members of the jury who fought to the last. I was amazed, as several smart, talented, with an analytical warehouse of the mind of people who have absolutely opposite opinions gathering. As the arguments say, the boiling point in the scientific discussion reached the maximum ... ”, but, in his opinion, all the jury members were satisfied with the developed decision.
For the victory of the paleontologist Alexander Markov, many were sick, and his appearance on the stage was met with stormy applause. His speech was short, but very meaningful. Spectators learned that, according to anthropologists, the average 20 thousand years of brain size decreases. “The people of the upper Paleolithic, apparently, surpassed us in abilities, i.e. We are dumb. Why this happens is a long conversation. There are many reasons, but, in particular, because life became more regulated, predictable and demand for innovative thinking fell. ” But now, as the laureate emphasized, “ we are already 7 billion, and our influence on planetary processes has become too significant and too harmful so that we allow ourselves to dull further. The loss of the brain must somehow be stopped. Today, the winners, the Black Dragon, are the Dynasty Foundation and Dmitry Borisovich Zimin, who is my low bow and deep gratitude for everything that he and the fund had done for healing the cultural environment, and a lot was done.
On the eve of the ceremony, it was very difficult to predict who would become the winner in the nomination “Humanitarian Sciences”. On equal terms, the books of Jacob Gordin “Caucasian Atlantis”, the permanent author of the TRV-hunger Irina Levontina “Russian with a dictionary”, Vladimir Plungyan “why the languages are so different” and Konstantin Sonin “Sonin.ru: Lessons of Economics” competed.
Suddenly and expected for many, the author of the book “Why Languages is so different” Vladimir Plunungyan was called the main “enlightener” of the year. In his speech, he noticed that he did not expect such a decision of the jury. “I am glad for linguistics, this is one of the most interesting areas of knowledge, maybe there is no more complicated object for learning than the human language, and the ordinary modern, and even an intelligent person knows very little language. ... Therefore, you need to welcome such an increase in the space of linguistic knowledge. I tried to do this in relation to the variety of linguistic humanity as a whole. It seems to me that this is very timid, the very first step, I perfectly see what I did and what not. And if something happened, then I am glad, and I would be pleased if everyone found out about the variety of human languages a little more. ”
According to the organizers, the prize winners will receive a monetary reward in the amount of 720 thousand rubles. Publishers of laureates book-AST-Press and Corpus-will be awarded with monetary certificates with a dignity of 130 thousand rubles. to promote books in the book market. Also, from this year, not only laureates, but all the finalists receive cash prizes. The authors who are on the short list will receive a monetary prize of 120 thousand rubles. All books from a short list will go to 125 libraries of Russia in December. See you on the next "Enlightener"!
Natalia Demina
Photos provided by the Dynasty Foundation