Gamma bursts, Martian ice, and cosmic passion: Discover how Russia explores the universe in an interview with Igor Mitrofanov.

— In the distant year of 1984, 40 years ago, you began your work at the Institute of Space Research, thanks to the encouragement of Iosif Samuilovich Shklovsky. How did it happen?

— I should start by mentioning that I am from St. Petersburg and moved to Moscow in 1981 at the invitation of Iosif Samuilovich, which was unexpected for me. I graduated from the Faculty of Physics at Leningrad State University, majoring in quantum mechanics, and enrolled in the graduate program at what I considered to be the best physics institute in the country — the A. F. Ioffe Institute in St. Petersburg. At that time, a second revolution in astronomy was underway. The first, I remind you, took place in the mid-16th to early 17th century and is associated with the names of Copernicus and Galileo.

Now, the space era had begun, and physicists, in collaboration with astronomers, were able to launch their instruments into space. They witnessed a completely new universe that was invisible through the Earth's atmosphere. X-ray astronomy and gamma astronomy commenced, and these types of electromagnetic radiation are closely related to nuclear physics, quantum mechanics, and all these elementary particles. My education in "quanta" was very suitable for this new astronomy.

I worked in the sector of Arkadiy Zakharovich Dolginov, which was the theoretical astrophysics sector. It still exists in the theoretical department of the A. F. Ioffe Institute. At that time, many young people joined the sector — it was a peak period of interest in astrophysics. I started working there and began to shift more and more from theoretical science and quantum mechanics towards experiments. When a new astronomical phenomenon is discovered in a space project, it's crucial not only to understand its quantum nature but also to know how the satellite is structured, how it operates, and how to process the data correctly. Therefore, I became actively interested in experimental X-ray and gamma astronomy.

— Was this when cosmic gamma bursts started to be registered?

— Yes. To this day, people still do not fully understand what they are, and back then, we understood nothing about them at all. Meanwhile, at the institute, there was a group led by Evgeny Pavlovich Mazets, which obtained unique data on this phenomenon during the "Conus" experiment. Naturally, I became fascinated with gamma bursts.

In Moscow, there was also a vibrant life in the field of new astronomy. A unified astronomical seminar, OAS, was held weekly, co-chaired by luminaries of Soviet astrophysics such as Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg, Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich, and Iosif Samuilovich Shklovsky. We met at GAISh because it was a university (the State Astronomical Institute named after P. K. Shternberg is part of Lomonosov Moscow State University — ed.), and there were no entry passes required. Naturally, we from St. Petersburg wanted to share with our colleagues in Moscow what we had developed. Therefore, we often traveled to these seminars, and it was during this time that I personally met Iosif Samuilovich.

— What impression did he make on you? They say he was an emotional person.

— He was very emotional, but I realized this much later when I started working with him at IKI. In the formal setting of the seminar, he was quite reserved. What I immediately noticed was that he had, I believe not only in scientific matters but also in everyday life, an unusual logic of thought. In his reports and personal conversations, he often intertwined several topics simultaneously, and listeners did not even suspect why he decided to connect them. Then, suddenly, in his conclusions, they converged into a unified concept.

— Did he see this connection right away?

— Yes, he saw it immediately. This made a strong impression on me. Shklovsky loved St. Petersburg very much and often came to visit us from Moscow. He always stayed at a hotel near the Hermitage — the academy had acquired several large communal apartments there, turning them into an academic hotel. Living there, close to the Atlantes and Palace Square, he loved to stroll through the wonderful surroundings of St. Petersburg during the white nights.

Once, during one of his visits, we found it necessary to consult with him. It was a serious conversation. In our sector worked an outstanding physicist with a non-trivial fate, Erast Borisovich Gliner. One day, colleagues from GOI (State Optical Institute) invited him to collaborate on the creation of a detector-interferometer for registering cosmic gravitational waves (on February 11, 2016, the LIGO and VIRGO collaborations announced the discovery of gravitational waves through direct detection on September 14, 2015 — ed.).

— That’s a very serious topic!

— Yes, and Erast Borisovich invited me to work with him in this direction. I suggested to Erast Borisovich: let’s consult with Shklovsky. Shklovsky harmoniously combined the experience of theoretical research with the practice of concrete experimental work. We arranged a meeting, visited him at his Palace office, and said that the time for gravitational wave astronomy had come: we seemed to have figured out cosmic X-rays.

Shklovsky had an interesting conversation with us: on the one hand, he clearly did not want to discourage us, but on the other hand, he pessimistically remarked that it was unlikely to lead to anything, "but you can try." In fact, that was the first conversation in which I began to understand that the life of a theorist is fundamentally different from that of an experimentalist. The latter is much more interesting: you can discover something unexpected, but you can also lose significantly.

— So what did you manage to achieve?

— Naturally, nothing. We quickly realized that our colleagues who suggested we participate in creating this gravitational wave telescope were actually thinking about how to boost their budget. This story lasted only a year and a half to two years.

And then, one spring day in 1981, after another seminar at IKI, Iosif Samuilovich invited me to the hall near his office to talk. We settled into the "red chairs" — back then, there were such chairs in the lobbies near the elevators, and the old-timers at IKI remember them. Shklovsky began bluntly: "You said you wanted to study gravitational waves, you naturally achieved nothing, and we have significant work going on in our department on gamma astronomy..." At that time, I already had articles on gamma bursts, trying to understand their nature. Iosif Samuilovich continued: "Talk to Tatiana and come to my department at IKI." Tatiana is my wife.

— How did she react to this?

— During the conversation, Shklovsky, a subtle psychologist, changed his mind: "You better not talk to her yet. Soon there will be a nationwide astronomical conference at your place, in Peterhof, I will come there, and you bring her along, I will talk to her myself."

— Did that happen?

— Almost. He traveled to St. Petersburg with one of the IKI colleagues, and on the train, he told him that he planned to transfer Mitrofanov to his team. The first person we encountered when Tatiana and I arrived in Peterhof was that very employee. He immediately approached Tatiana and said: "Hello, Muscovite..."

— What was her reaction?

— Firstly, shock: how could she be a Muscovite? Secondly, she immediately realized that I was somehow involved in this. So, by the time we reached Iosif Samuilovich, the secret was already out. In the end, my wife's consent was obtained, and since December 1981, I became a staff member in Shklovsky's department.

— What did that department represent?

— From my perspective, Shklovsky's astrophysical department at the Institute of Space Research was a great department. The structure of Soviet academic institutes at that time was such that each institute had a "first department" — security, a "second department" — military registration. So, Shklovsky's department was the third. The director back then was Roald Zinnurovich Sagdeev, who approved my transfer to IKI RAS. I began working in the gamma astronomy lab, which was then developing a significant space observatory in the gamma range, "Gamma-1." I was appointed as a theorist-interpreter: when this "Gamma-1" flew, the data would come in, and they needed to be processed and discussed immediately. Unfortunately, the instruments of this observatory did not work after launch, and my main task remained gamma bursts.

I worked