The Making of a Soviet Scientist; My Adventures in Nuclear Fusion and Space from Stalin to Star Wars

New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1994. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. 24 cm. xi, [1], 339, [1] pages. Acid-free paper. Foreword by Carl Sagan. Glossary. Index. Slight wear to DJ edges. Inscribed by the author on the free end paper. Inscription reads To Jon Keeton With best wishes Roald Sagdeev April 25, 94. Roald Zinnurovich Sagdeev (born 26 December 1932) is a Russian expert in plasma physics and a former director of the Space Research Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He was also a science advisor to the Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. Sagdeev graduated from Moscow State University. He is a member of both the Russian Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He has worked at the University of Maryland, College Park since 1989 in the University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences. He is also currently a Senior Advisor at the Albright Stonebridge Group, a global strategy firm, where he assists clients with issues involving Russia and countries in the former Soviet Union. Sagdeev was married to, and divorced from, Susan Eisenhower, granddaughter of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Sagdeev was the recipient of the 2003 Carl Sagan Memorial Award, and the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics (2001). At the age of 35, he was one of the youngest persons ever elected as a full academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. From 1970 until 1973, he worked at the Institute of Physics of High Temperatures of the USSR Academy of Sciences. His work on thermonuclear fusion at the Institute of Atomic Energy and the Institute of Nuclear Physics have won recognition. Derived from a Kirkus review: The West's understanding of science under communism is painted in broad strokes: the horrors of Lysenkoism, the house arrest of Peter Kapitsa, the banishment of Sakharov, and innumerable accounts of persecution and consignment to asylums or gulags for dissidents, and even nondissidents if they were Jews. Sagdeev's story is different. Born in 1932 he was the gifted son of Tatar parents, his father having been plucked from the peasantry to become a mathematician and teacher. Sagdeev graduated from Moscow State University and proved worthy of mentorship under the likes of Lev Landau, Igor Kurchatov, and Kapitsa himself. What follows next is a career line in which Sagdeev demonstrated his gifts for science and administration, first in research on controlled fusion—an area where Russian research has been outstanding—and then in space science. Sagdeev was director of the Space Research Institute in Moscow—the civilian space agency. There, and in his earlier positions in the academic city founded in Novosibirsk, Sagdeev fought a constant battle with the military-industrial complex, party functionaries, and the KGB. Sheer wit, intelligence, and bravado enabled him to win more often than not—over assorted villains with nicknames like the ``Big Hammer'' or ``Big Oleg.'' This fighting within the system opened the way to international communications, travel, and scientific collaboration—a pre- glasnost glasnost. It makes for remarkable reading, often laced with insights into Russian thinking and humor. It is not without interest that Sagdeev's editor and the cause of his ``heart'' drain to America (where he teaches physics at Univ. of Maryland) is his wife—Susan Eisenhower, granddaughter of the man who coined the term military-industrial complex.