RAS Prize winners - 2020

In December 2020, the names of the new laureates of the RAS Prize for the best work to popularize science became known. They were scientific journalist Elena Kleshchenko , astrochemist Dmitry Viba and astrophysicist Kirill Maslennikov with colleagues. The winners determined the vote of members of the RAS Commission on the popularization of science. We turned to each of the three laureates with a request to answer our questions.

Elena Kleshchenko: "I do not believe in inspiration, I believe in deadline"

Scientific journalist, editor -in -chief of the PCR.News portal Elena Kleshchenko became the laureate of the prize for the book “DNA and its man. Brief History of DNA identification ”(Publishing House“ Alpina Non-Fixh ”)

-When did your first popular science article appear?

-In the early 1990s, when I graduated from the biofac of Moscow State University and studied at the school-studio of scientific journalism of the magazine Chemistry and Life. It was a homework: find scientific news and write a note. She wrote about the death of brain cells under the influence of ethyl alcohol, with a “hard god” of the Strugatsky, about the alcohol unit of Father Kabani. I was told that my note will be printed. Print! In 1993, this word sounded - not to convey how. Then I was invited to work in the editorial office of Chemistry and Life, and it was great.

- At the competition of the Russian Academy of Sciences, your book “DNA and its man. Brief history of DNA identification. " How was it created? When was her plan born? How long has work?

-Again, in collaboration with “chemistry and life”. There was an idea to make a series of books of the authors of the magazine. With the publishing house that invited us, we all eventually broke up for a number of reasons, and I was very lucky: from there I went to the Alpina Non-Fixes to Pavel Podkosov. I could not imagine that now there is such a high level of publishing work. The topic of the book was offered by the editor -in -chief Hizh Lyubov Nikolaevna Strelnikova, by the way, also the finalist of the "Enlightener". I liked the idea to write about the DNA identification of a person, I was interested in this topic as a journalist and as a science fiction writer, I have accumulated a lot of materials. Since the first publisher set the strict time frame, the book was written according to the system "I do not believe in inspiration, I believe in deadline." She began in February-March 2018, a draft was ready in November. But then even before spring, the rules are the text on the advice of the scientific editor Svetlana Borinskaya and several interested readers. Another chapter grew out of the response to the remark of Mikhail Gelfand, which was not in the draft.

-What kind of popular science project are you working on now?

- Now I am the editor -in -chief of the PCR.News portal about molecular biology and molecular medicine. Replaced Alexei Torgasheva, who created our project. I can say that writing books is much easier than being an editor -in -chief.

- What in the popularization of science is most fascinated by you?

- I like to interview scientists, although I still worry every time. Talking with a person who is much smarter than you is the useful experience. The news feed is considered black journalistic work, which is actually wrong: it is difficult to make good news. I also like to cook scientific news. And, of course, the new experience of the past year: my area, molecular biology and molecular diagnosis, suddenly became interesting for many people. The reason is sad is a pandemic, but I never felt so much that we were doing a useful business.

- What, on the contrary, is the most difficult?

- Financial issues. But this is an extensive topic.

- What problems of enlightenment seem to be the most important at present?

- In addition to the same financial issues - the transition to new formats, from paper on the Internet. The transition is apparently inevitable, but it would be great in the process not to lose what the Paper Scientific and popular publications created. And the publications themselves cannot be lost, such as “knowledge - power” and the same “chemistry and life”, and the rules of work. There was a lot of conversations about the fact of the fact, and in general they realized what it is and why. But, for example, how many electronic scientific media have a literary editor? How many understand why it is needed at all, or everyone considers this position a relic of the past and unnecessary expense, as well as the corrector? What kind of such “stylistics” and “composition” are needed, are they needed? Someone should teach young scientific journalists and help adults. There are many of us, and we are well done, but there is no limit to perfection: let's improve the quality of texts.

Dmitry Vibe: "I became a popularizer with an eclipse of the sun"

Doct. physical. sciences, head. The Department of Physics and Evolution of the Stars of the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences Dmitry Vibe was awarded the RAS Prize for the Lecture cycle “Evolution of the Interstellar Environment” nominated for the competition of the Support, Educational and Cultural Initiatives “Trajectory”. You can see the lectures at the link [ 1 ].

-When did your first popular-popular lecture take place?

-I can definitely date my first popular science publication-according to a sunny eclipse, as a "word about Igor's shelf." In the morning construction on September 23, 1987 (during a military service in the Soviet Army), I was attracted by some unnatural lighting. Looking at the sun, I saw that it has the shape of a sickle. It is not necessary to be surprised at what I learned about the solar eclipse only when I saw him; Observative astronomy at that period of life was not interested in me in the slightest degree. But I recognized the phenomenon itself and on the same day wrote a short note about him in the “battle leaf” of the battalion.

With the first popular science lecture is more difficult. Some such performances had happened for a long time, but I will not risk calling them lectures. Probably, the first real popular science lecture was a performance in the Polytechnic Museum with a story about brown dwarfs. If the memory and dates of files on the computer are not cheated on me, this happened in April 2008.

- At the RAS competition, your lecture cycle "Evolution of the Interstellar Environment" was highly appreciated. How was it created?

- I have been giving lectures on the interstellar environment and starship for a long time, but so far it was either short (approximately hourly) performances, or a long course in the Arche Center. The express lecture of the Trajectory Foundation turned out to be an intermediate format when, on the one hand, there is already enough time to talk about details (unlike a regular lecture), on the other hand, it is still not enough to tell everything thoroughly (as in the framework of a long course). Therefore, I had to work hard to carefully touch the complex things, but not to get bogged down in them.

-What kind of popular science project are you working on now?

- I am not a popularizer in the full sense of the word, so I have no “hand -handed” projects. But I try to constantly keep myself in good shape on two topics (which are not directly related to my scientific work) - these are studies of the solar system and astrobiology.

- What in the popularization of science is most fascinated by you?

-Firstly, I use lectures as an incentive for self-education. Actually, the topic of even the very first lecture - about brown dwarfs - was chosen precisely for these reasons. At that time, we paid some attention to gas -polls at brown dwarfs, and I took the opportunity to find out more about the dwarfs themselves. Secondly, I just like to speak to the audience.

- What, on the contrary, is the most difficult?

-Due to some features of memory, I cannot prepare lectures in advance. This should happen a day or two before the performance, otherwise I forget the invented beautiful metaphors, transitions between slides, sometimes in general the logic of the narrative. That is, I cannot say to myself: “So, in two weeks, a lecture, and now there are three free days. Let me cook it now. ” This will be a vain work. And a day or two before the performance, of course, from nowhere, some reports, meetings, etc. arise. And there is a constant fear to say nonsense. Although I try to choose topics close to my professional interests, but still no, no, and you will go to the edge of your knowledge. And you can fall from it.

- What problems of enlightenment seem to you the most important at present?

- There is a temptation to write about state spying, but this is a problem not of enlightenment, it is significantly wider. As an important specifically educational problem, I would probably call the lack of a generally accepted understanding of what exactly should be the result of educational activities. What is its goal? Read as many lectures as possible? To come up with as many new formats as possible? To attract as many spectators as possible? But it is unclear how much it relates to enlightenment.

Once at a lecture, I noticed a woman who, shortly before, was at the exactly the same lecture. I asked her why she was listening to the same thing twice. She replied that she did not care what I was saying. After a hard day, she wants to listen to a smart person. On the one hand, the honor of a madman who will bring to humanity a golden dream. On the other hand, what kind of enlightenment is this? This is entertainment, the maximum education of the enlightened.

What to do with this, I do not know. It is impossible to impose formats and goal -setting to a person who is engaged in enlightenment on his own enthusiasm. Organized enlightenment is shooting in the areas. Probably, I do not have one sad experience of lecturing for groups of schoolchildren driven into the audience. I once asked the teacher who accompanied the next crowd of children why this is being done. He is tormented, to children torment, I am shame. The answer was: “Suddenly, at least someone will be interested in at least something ...” Probably, you just need to be patient. “When we push more borders with good enlightenment, over time (according to the calculation of philosophical tables, five hundred years later)”, let the result be.

Kirill Maslennikov: "Astronomy is a drive"

Cand. physical. sciences, p. n. pp., Assistant Director of the Main Astronomical Observatory (GAO RAS) for international ties, Kirill Maslennikov, divided the Award Prize with Dmitry Veselov and producer Vladimir Shcherbakov, who worked with him on the video screens of the Astronomer on the Scientific and Popular Video Kwerty. The video “Batygin’s hypothesis about the Ninth Planet” they shot ”scored more than 1.3 million views [ 2 ].

- When did you become a popularizer of science? From what project (lectures, articles)?

-I was still fond of work with schoolchildren at the university (the famous Yumsh, a youth mathematical school, existed at LSU Matmeh, and in the summer-LMS, a summer school for gifted schoolchildren, I solved the problems in physics in it to somehow dilute continuous mathematics).

In the Pulkovo Observatory, where I began to work after graduate school at the Institute of Space Research, schoolchildren often brought on an excursion, and I, like many of our other employees, often drove them to the museum and telescopes. But in fact, “enlightenment”, in that in English it is called Outreach , I began to engage in regularly after the congress of European astronomers Jenam in 2011. ESO employees who arrived at him invited me to lead the Russian -speaking version of the ESO website, which is translated into most of European languages. So I became a member of the Enlightenment network ESO Network.

A few years later, when the Russian website ESO gained popularity, the famous blogger-educator Alexei Paevsky asked me to help organize his trip to the ESO Chilean observatories. As a result, in the winter of 2016, we went there both. We visited all three ESO observatories-on La-Slya, on Serro-paranal and on the chachantor plateau, took a lot of photographed, talked with astronomers.

I actually consider my biography of an observant astronomer happy: even if I can’t boast of especially large scientific achievements, but I had a chance to observe the largest telescopes of Russia: at a six-meter BTA, on the Crimean ZTS, on the Pulkovo large refractor, on our AZT-24 in Italy; For several years I managed one of the highest observation stations in the world, the Observatory of Shorbulak on the Eastern Pamir, created by Pulkov and Iki forces. But what I saw in the ESO observatory made a strong impression on me, and returning home, I began to look for the opportunity to talk about it.

It seemed (and seems to be) a big mistake that in such a largest European and global astronomical enterprise as ESO, Russia is not involved, especially in the light of the fact that for more than half a century, large astronomical instruments and their own telescopes and receivers of such a class and scale that ESO have, in all appearance, will not have been built for a long time. Of course, the professional community of Russia's astronomers is well known without me, and yet I wanted to hope that, telling about my impressions, I could at least contribute to a way out of this impasse.

- At the RAS competition, your lecture cycle “Notes of the astronomer” was highly appreciated. How was it created?

-In search of the “stands” I met the employees of the popular science channel QWERTY, with his then editor-in-chief Irina Tikhonova, who at first “clip” format that seemed to me was not too effective-10-15-minute videos with a large number of illustrations, designed both for a not very prepared viewer and those who can immediately be deeply deeply deep “Turn” to the topic and understand the main thing. It soon turned out that this format “went” and I took my special niche on the educational field. However, the lectures of the usual format for an hour and a half were also invited to read. Their theme has become much more diverse - it goes far beyond the viewing of ESO.

-What kind of popular science project are you working on now?

-I continue to shoot our videos on the QWERTY channel, but I am happy to respond to invitations to educational festivals-in addition to St. Petersburg, I was in Nizhny Novgorod and Perm, gave lectures in Archae (now online), in the new popular-popular lecture of the Academy of Sciences (SPBNC RAS, vk.com/lekzii_ras), which organized organizing The wonderful Katya Krylova, in the “Budge”, “A pinch of salt”, “Progress-school”, participated in the Pint of Science project.

I regularly give lectures at the Museum of the Pulkovo Observatory, which over the past few years has become thanks to its new director Natalia Miller and the beautiful team of poplar astronomers with a noticeable point on the educational map of Peter.

- What fascinates you most in popularization? What, on the contrary, is the most difficult? What problems of enlightenment seem to you the most important at present?

- In this matter, of course, the drive - in astronomy, there are now many “hot” events in astronomy. It is difficult not to lose the severity of the presentation, not to slide into excessive simplification-and sometimes, by the way, it turns out that you yourself do not understand something either. As for the problems, the most urgent is not to allow officials to achieve their own and establish censorship and bureaucratic slingshots in our area.

Finalists of the Academy of Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences

The organizers of the award note that by October 1, 2020, a competition for the RAS Commission on the popularization of science was presented:

• in the nomination “The best popular science book for schoolchildren and students”-59 books;
• in the nomination “The best cycle of popular science lectures for schoolchildren and students”-38 lecture cycles;
• In the nomination "Best Cycle of Short Scientific and Science Video"-35 video projects.

In the book nomination II, the book “Physics of everyday life. From soap bubbles to quantum technologies, ”Andrei Varlamov, Attilio Rigamonti (a ttilio rigamonti ) and Jacques Villain, and the third place is the book“ Carnival of Molecules. Chemistry is unusual and funny »Mikhail Levitsky. Both books were nominated by Alpina Non-Fixes. Unfortunately, Mikhail Moiseevich died, not learning that he became the finalist of the RAS Prize.

In the lecture nomination II, a place of lectures “Physics without formulas” nominated for the competition, the Department of General and Experimental Physics, Iftis MPSU, was divided (Vladimir Sperantov, Anton Veselov, Alla Kazantseva, Ksenia Teplyakova and Elena Kovalevskaya), and the Lecture cycle “Atmosphere of the Earth” Oleg Ulegnikov, nominated by the Fund, nominated with a fund, nominated with the Fund. "Trajectory." The 3rd place in this nomination was awarded to the anthropological series “Types of People”, nominated for the RAS competition by the State Darwin Museum (the authors of the project - Dmitry Olshansky, Elena Sudarikova and Amir Akhtyzyan).

In video recordings II, the place was awarded to Alexei Ivanchenko for the video “Just Physics” cycle, nominated for the RAS competition by the Nauka television channel. III place was divided by the video cycle "Baikal-GVD. Neutrino hunters ”(his authors are Dmitry Naumov, Mikhail Zhukov, Elena Dubovik), nominated by the United Institute of Nuclear Research (Dubna) and Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Grigory Trubnikov, and the video cycle“ A minute of literacy with Semyon Rof ”(authors - Sergey Rofa, Ekaterina Sukhoruchenkova), nominated by the“ Search ”portal.

Члены комиссии РАН по популяризации науки также высказались за то, чтобы вручить специальный диплом за высокое качество научной популяризации сэру Мартину Полякову (Martyn Poliakoff), режиссеру Брэди Харан (Brady Haran) и старшему лаборанту Нилу Барнсу (Neil Barnes) за проект «Магическая таблица элементов (Periodic videos)», номинированный на конкурс академиком РАН Юрием Оганесяном и РХТУ им. Mendeleev.

Prepared by Natalia Demina