[Interview was translated from Russian]
Greetings, Kev Minullinovich. We are glad to see you within the walls of our institute and we really appreciate you for taking the time to give a lecture at ITC. It is always exciting to listen to a talk given by scientist with a capital S. Let me introduce you, Prof. Salikhov, to our readers who might not know you yet.
Kev Minullinovich Salikhov is Doctor of Sciences, Professor, Academician of both the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Tatarstan Academy of Sciences, Scientific Head of the Kazan E. K. Zavoisky Physical-Technical Institute (KPhTI), Vice-president of the Tatarstan Academy of Sciences, top expert in the field of dynamics of spin systems, and the author of many articles and books.
How did you become the person you are today? What do you think helped you achieve such great success in academia?
Many things in life depend on how circumstances develop, what challenges a person faces. The person you are now is a result of how you react to these circumstances, how ready you are to find and implement an adequate response to these challenges.
How did Kazan and Novosibirsk Akademgorodok intertwine in your scientific career?
I studied Physics and Mathematics at Kazan State University (now Kazan Federal University – ed.). I was a student of well-known scientist Prof. S.A. Altshuler. The circumstances developed in such a way that I did my postgraduate studies in Leningrad, my PhD thesis was focused on the physics of polymers. After that I got married, I and my wife Zoya moved to Novosibirsk, so I started working at the Institute of Chemical Kinetics and Combustion SB RAS in 1963. Not immediately, but after 3-4 years I began to actively work in the field of electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy. As a theoretical physicist, I got an opportunity to make a real contribution to the basics and development of pulse EPR spectroscopy, to lay the foundations of spin chemistry. Everything was going well.
What achievement are you most proud of during your time at the Institute of Chemical Kinetics and Combustion?
I think my major scientific achievements during the Novosibirsk period are as follows:
• Fundamental contribution to the theory of magnetic and spin effects in radical chemical reactions (Lenin Prize 1986, together with Yu.N. Molin, R.Z. Sagdeev from Novosibirsk and A.L. Buchachenko, E.L. Frankevich from Moscow);
• Fundamental contribution to the theory of pulsed EPR spectroscopy;
• Founding contributions to the theory of spin exchange and the method of spin probes.
Kev Minullinovich Salikhov and Renad Zinnurovich Sagdeev
How come you moved to Kazan?
Perestroika began. At the institutes of the USSR Academy of Sciences, employees of the institute received the right to recommend candidates for the position of director. And at the beginning of 1988, the Chairman of the Kazan Scientific Center called me and I was offered to take part in the election of the director of the Kazan E. K. Zavoisky Physical-Technical Institute. In this whirlwind of events, I was elected to this position. This institute is named after E.K. Zavoisky – an outstanding scientist who was the first to observe the phenomenon of EPR. And my scientific findings obtained at Novosibirsk Akademgorodok were directly related to EPR. I think that is why I was elected.
From the outset, I managed to inspire every scientist working at the institute, but also many people in Tatarstan, Russia, and abroad with the idea to make KIPT one of the world's leading centers in EPR spectroscopy.
So what came out of this?
In the annual staff meeting, I summed up the results of my 27 years of work as a director. Imagine a person, who worked all day tirelessly and feel satisfied with the work he has done. This is how I felt. The Kazan Physical Technical Institute of RAS is today the internationally recognized center of EPR studies.
On the occasion of my 80th Birthday, the former president of the AMPERE society, the oldest society in the field of radiospectroscopy, and ISMAR, the international society of magnetic resonance, Prof. H.-W. Spiess from Max Planck institute for polymer research (Mainz, Germany) wrote in the journal Zeitschrift fuer Physikalische Chemie: “Your enthusiasm for your research and the world wide community of scientists is unprecedented. You made the Kazan Physical-Technical Institute in Kazan a worldwide recognized center of EPR spectroscopy and its members spread around the globe”.
I sincerely think that many people approve of my work. I have quite a lot of evidence of the high appreciation of my work by the world scientific community. Of course, this is inspiring. But for me, the support and appreciation of my work from my colleagues at the institute, the Tatarstan Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the public and the leadership of Tatarstan are especially dear.
Over the past 27 years, we did a lot at KPhTI. Firstly, we developed a lot of new scientific directions from the ground up, such as pulsed EPR spectroscopy; as well as scanning tunneling and atomic force microscopy, femtosecond spectroscopy, and quantum computing; we also developed and implemented in practice several medical MR imaging machines. Also, I stood at the origins of the Applied Magnetic Resonance as a founding editor, now the 52nd volume is coming out. And also I launched the KIPT‘s yearbook. We established the International Zavoisky Award for an outstanding contribution to the development of electron paramagnetic resonance. And Kazan is on the calendar of magnetic resonance conferences – in 1994, for the first time in Russia, AMPERE Congress was held in Kazan; nowadays the conference “Modern Development of Magnetic Resonance”, which became traditional, is held annually in Kazan. A major achievement was the setting up of Dissertation Council at KIPT.
Did you manage to combine the director's work with scientific research?
Yes, and I appreciate my scientific results obtained during these years. I and PhD students R.B. Zaripov and I.T. Khairutdinov developed the theory of pulsed electron-electron double resonance (PELDOR) for paramagnetic centers with overlapping EPR spectra. And with PhD student A.Y. Mambetov, we studied the dependence of the effective radius of the spin exchange between charged spin ½ paramagnetic particles on parameters of the Heisenberg exchange interaction. I also theoretically predicted a new mechanism for the hyperpolarization of electron spins of triplet excitons, induced by the spin selection rules for triplet-triplet annihilation.
But most importantly, several of my theoretical predictions have received experimental confirmation in EPR spectroscopy of separated charges, are formed at the primary stage of the conversion of solar energy into chemical energy in plants: quantum beats of line intensity in the EPR spectrum; abnormal phase of the electron spin echo signal; the red shift of the modulation frequency of the primary spin echo signal caused by random modulation of the dipole-dipole spin-spin interaction by random spin flips during spin-lattice relaxation (with A.A. Sukhanov).
In Kazan, I also got interested in quantum information processing and proposed a new protocol for performing quantum teleportation on electron spins using spin election rules for an elementary chemical act as a logical operation. Another protocol was suggested for the implementation of a quantum logic operation controlled NOT (CNOT) using electron spins as qubits in the collaboration with PhD student M.Y. Volkov.
Also with PhD student R.B. Zaripov and other colleagues we proposed the theoretical interpretation of the deceleration of spin decoherence in multipulse experiments as a manifestation of the quantum Zeno effect.
Today I am full of plans for the future. There are many things ahead. I want to create a Center for the Development of Science Methodology.
Returning to your Novosibirsk period of life, you worked here for 25 years, and it is here that you worked with outstanding scientists, including Renad Sagdeev, who later founded the ITC. And now KIPT and ITC have joint research projects. How can you maintain such strong collaborations for so many years?
This is an easy question. I did not for a moment lose scientific and friendly ties with my many colleagues in Akademgorodok. I’m touch with Alexander Georgievich Maryasov. I was his PhD supervisor. I often tell him about my recent results and consult with him. We also regularly meet Elena Grigorievna Bagryanskaya. I am always in touch with Yuri Nikolaevich Molin, with Tatyana Viktorovna Leshina, less often with Renad Zinnurovich Sagdeev due to his busy schedule, interacted with Yuri Dmitrievich Tsvetkov.
Now I am participating in the Russian Science Foundation project on the basis of the ITC SB RAS and expect to noticeably intensify my interaction and joint work with colleagues in my native Akademgorodok: ITC, ICKC, NIOC (Novosibirsk Institute of Organic Chemistry – ed.).
I have collaborated a lot with colleagues from the Free University of Berlin. Alexandra Vadimovna Yurkovskaya, Konstantin Lvovich Ivanov, I also collaborated a lot and fruitfully with them. As a result, I developed a very good relationship with them. Therefore, it is not surprising that I have now found myself in a joint scientific RSF project, where I and Prof. Hans-Martin Vieth from the Free University of Berlin are leading scientists. So I have not made any “efforts” for cooperation over the years. It's like breathing.
I would also like to know your opinion on this issue. There was a time when EPR spectrometers were built in Russia and this provided a powerful basis for the development of EPR field. And now leading positions go to Europe, the USA and China. How do you think the EPR field will develop further in Russia and what awaits it?
Yes, there is such a situation with Russian scientific instrumentation in the field of magnetic resonance. But it did not arise because we cannot make such machines. The only question is whether we want to develop this direction. Recently, on behalf of the international EPR society (IEPRS), I presented the silver medal of this society to Elena Grigorievna Bagryanskaya. When I visited NIOC, I saw a pulse EPR spectrometer, which they are launching these days. And they made it together with colleagues from Tomsk. There was a strong intention, so they did it.
Is science about creating new technologies that should work here and now? Or is it about satisfying the researcher’s interest and the formation of fundamental knowledge?
It is wrong to oppose fundamental and applied science. The meaning of science is in the knowledge of nature. This requires fundamental research. Fundamental knowledge leads to the creation of new technologies. Such a release of fundamental knowledge into practice can happen here and now, or it can happen many years later. Take scientific research on controlled thermonuclear reactions. These works (not cheap) have been going on for more than half a century. We hope and believe that scientists will solve this problem. And this will be a universal breakthrough in solving the problems of energy and ecology. There are many more areas of science in which research is aimed at creating new technologies not in the here and now, but in the future.
What do you think of Open Science? It is a movement aimed to make scientific research, data and their dissemination available to any member of an inquiring society and this movement is growing. In this regard, how do you see the further development of scientific publishing houses and journals?
These are pressing questions. The development of the Internet leads to major changes in the technology of information dissemination. I think that paper journals are in “great danger” and may leave the stage. Personally, I will be sad.
In Germany there is such a practice – to give an opportunity to any person on a specified day to come and see the laboratories at research institutes and see what scientists are doing. What do you think would happen if such events were introduced in Russia?
This must be done! In our country, including the institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences, open days for schoolchildren and university entrants have always been and are being held. Now this work is also given great importance. But it would be worthwhile to adopt the experience of Germany and hold open days at the institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences and for taxpayers.
While we're on the subject of science being open to taxpayers, let's talk about one of your latest achievements - creating a new spin exchange paradigm. We published its main provisions in the announcement of your talk at ITC. But there is an important question - how did you decide that it was time to change the paradigm? How not to miss the moment when the previous paradigm is no longer usable?
Any paradigm is a model based on available facts. In the course of applying this model to interpret new facts, difficulties and inconsistencies inevitably arise. While there are few such deviations from the model, and they do not seem to be fundamentally important, it is possible to limit ourselves to small corrections of the model and adjust new facts to fit it. A new fact may even be dismissed as erroneous! In fact, the model (paradigm) acts in relation to new facts as a Procrustean bed. Over time, when such facts, which do not fit into the model, become more than a certain “critical number”, when the thought already comes “how much can one put up with the shortcomings of the model”, it becomes clear that it is time to change the model, i.e. change the paradigm. The development of science is an endless series of paradigms replacing each other.
When conducting routine experiments, it happens that you rarely think about the fact that the specific result you have obtained goes beyond the paradigm in terms of which you work. Still, you need experience and a large amount of knowledge to be able to adjust the focus and start thinking more globally. Perhaps, it is necessary to teach undergraduate and graduate students to look at the bigger picture, what do you think?
Textbooks should teach you to think, ask questions, what and how.
I think that textbooks should first of all provide a clear presentation of paradigms. This will help shape the conceptual worldview. You can refer to the book by Thomas Samuel Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: "The formation of a paradigm ... is a sign of maturity in the development of any given scientific field."
Thank you so much for a fantastic interview, Kev Minullinovich! And I’ll close with asking you - how you were able to combine such a stormy scientific activity with the life of an ordinary person, a family? Tell us what you like to do when you aren't working on research.
For me, work has always been like a hobby. But I like to sit early in the morning on a boat with a fishing rod. Grace. I love picking mushrooms. Unfortunately, I have not done all this for more than 5 years. My wife Zoya was a great enthusiast of these outings. Now I have other hobbies. I love to look for paradigms, to watch how my great-granddaughter Esther, at her age of two and a half, daily presents reasons for amazing observations.
Fishing on a lake in the Pskov region
Currently, I am very keen on the idea of creating a Center for Modern Methodology for the Development of Science. I plan to transfer my experience of creating a new paradigm from EPR field to other disciplines. Now I am inviting people who are interested in making science more effective.
Connect with Prof. Salikhov:
e-mail: kevsalikhov@mail.ru
