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Mikhail Kovalchuk: biography and scientific work

Russian physicist Mikhail Kovalchuk was born in Leningrad on September 21, 1946 in the family of historian scientists. At different times (and often at the same time) he was the director of several leading research institutes, including the Institute of Crystallography and the most famous Kurchatov Institute, a member of the Skolkovo Council, the leading popular science programs on television, and the scientific secretary of the Council for Education, technology and science under the President of the Russian Federation. In addition, he was engaged in many more cases, which will be discussed here, since the hero of this article is Mikhail Valentinovich Kovalchuk.

A family

The father of a prominent physicist, Valentin Mikhailovich, a scientist and historian, a researcher at the Leningrad branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, worked at the Institute of History and was a specialist in the blockade of Leningrad as having experienced all its hardships. He lived ninety-seven years, died in 2013. My mother taught history at LSU.

Mikhail Kovalchuk is the elder brother of billionaire Yuri Kovalchuk, chairman of the board of directors at Rossiya Bank, which is connected with many large business assets. Yuri Kovalchuk is well known as a close friend of the president of Russia, and the son of billionaire Boris headed the department of priority projects in the Russian government, and currently chairs the board of JSC Inter RAO UES.

Wife and son

The wife of a popular physicist is also involved in history, she is an expert in Ireland and is the daughter of no less famous historian Yu. Polyakov, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Mikhail Kovalchuk's son became chairman of the board of directors of a large media holding - National Media Group, which owns stakes in the First and Fifth Channels, CTC Media, REN-TV, Izvestia and many other media outlets.

The name of Cyril Kovalchuk flashed in the press about the scandal with the reconstruction of the Bolkonsky house in the center of the capital. It is very possible that Mikhail Andreevich Kovalchuk served in Spassk-Dalniy, but his relationship with the hero of this article was not found.

Learning

After graduating from the physics faculty of Leningrad State University in 1970 and brilliantly defending a diploma at the Institute of Semiconductors of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, the topic of which was the study of X-rays dynamically scattered in perfect crystals, Mikhail Kovalchuk did not remain in the proposed postgraduate study, but was distributed to Moscow as an investigator of the Shubnikov Institute of Crystallography Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Three years later he was taken to the state. In 1978, Mikhail Kovalchuk, whose biography is extremely rich in scientific events, became a candidate of science, defending a thesis in the same field and similar to the thesis theme.

Ph.D

Nine years later, Mikhail Kovalchuk was already the head of the laboratory of X-ray optics and synchrotron radiation. And in ten years - again protection, now the thesis is prepared for a degree of the next degree - doctor of physical and mathematical sciences.

When defending, there were sharp opponents, in the opinion of which the results presented by the dissertant are not benign: they are either erroneous or plagiarized. Nevertheless, it was possible to fight back, and Mikhail Kovalchuk successfully defended himself.

Director and Professor

In 1998, Mikhail Kovalchuk became a professor and head of the Institute of Crystallography, where he came not so long ago as a simple trainee. In 2000, the Department of General Physics and Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences awarded him the rank of Corresponding Member (in condensed matter physics). Then he took over the leadership of the SIC "Space Materials Science" at the Institute.

Since 2005, took another responsible director position Mikhail Kovalchuk. Kurchatov Institute took him to the post of the head of the Center for Synchronic Radiation. In 2007, he was entrusted with the duties of vice-president of the Russian Academy of Sciences. However, Mikhail Kovalchuk could not fully enter this position, because he was not a full member of the RAS. And the majority of academicians refused to accept it as an active member, considering him to be more a manager than a scientist.

Reform of the RAS

Instead, in 2012 he was entrusted with the duties of the dean at the Physics Faculty of St. Petersburg State University, so he had to work at once in three outstanding institutes, which are also in different cities. It ended with the fact that in 2013 the secret ballot twice denied him a post that he owned the last fifteen years - Mikhail Kovalchuk was not re-elected director of the Institute of Crystallography.

After this, a bill appeared, the authorship of which many scientists attribute to the offended Kovalchuk. The Russian Academy of Sciences underwent rigorous reformation. Mikhail Kovalchuk himself did not deny involvement, claiming to the press that the Academy of Sciences must inevitably perish, just as the Roman Empire perished.

2015

This year Mikhail Kovalchuk had a lot of public speeches, from the most interesting ones - in the Federation Council, where he talked about how the US creates a new human subspecies - "service man", what dangers the use of artificial cells hides and how the United States influences The scientific and technical goals set by the rest of the world. Especially from their intervention, the science of Europe and Russia is suffering. According to Mikhail Kovalchuk, scientific cooperation between the countries should be gradually phased out and joint projects should not be launched.

In December, following the results of this speech, Putin met with Mikhail Kovalchuk. There he became aware that Academician E. Velikhov, president of the SIC "Kurchatov Institute", became an honorary president. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin appointed Mikhail Kovalchuk to this vacated position. Kovalchuk immediately proposed the creation of a new generation thermonuclear reactor. The beginning of 2016 brought new meetings between the President of the Russian Federation and the president of the Kurchatov Institute, where the search for organizations capable of controlling the current of thought was discussed.

More posts

Only important, really loud-sounding posts belonging to Mikhail Kovalchuk, count seventeen. It is for the most part membership in presidiums and commissions - in the Council under the President of the Russian Federation (science and education, modernization and technological development of the Russian economy, high technologies and innovations, etc.), in colleges - the Ministry of Industry of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation; In the council of chief and general designers, leading experts and scientists - the field of high-tech sectors in the economy; In the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation.

The scientific management also takes a lot of place on this list: the Faculty of MIPT (about this legendary institution will be said specifically), dealing with nano-, bio-, cognitive and information technologies; Department of Nanosystem Physics, Moscow State University, Department of Nuclear Physics Research Methods, St. Petersburg State University; Department of Physics of Interaction of MIPT Radiation; Taught as a professor at the Faculty of Materials Science of Moscow State University. He is deputy chairman of the RAS Commission, which deals with nanotechnology.

Besides

Mikhail Kovalchuk works as editor-in-chief of "Crystallography", an academic journal, and as deputy editor-in-chief of the scientific journal with the long title "Surface: X-Ray Research." The popular science television program of Mikhail Kovalchuk on the Fifth Channel is called "Stories from the Future".

He is the Chairman of the National Committee of Crystallographers of the Russian Federation; RSNE; NCRC. He is also a member of the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science), in the physics section.

Scientific activity

Most scientists of the Academy of Sciences consider Kovalchuk to be a great scientist in terms of X-ray structural analysis, but neither created new sciences nor contributed to other sciences. And pompous statements about the Galilean magnitude of the discoveries in the field of many sciences such as management, economics, pedagogy, political science, biology, racial theory and history (oh, how interesting is the deciphering of the Russian human genome!) - these are simply banal stupidities, which scientists consider weaknesses of an outstanding personality , But not Nazism and Lysenkoism.

For all such shortcomings, RAS scientists consider Mikhail Kovalchuk to be the most sensible and decent person among all heads of Russian sciences. They also say that absolutely different people conducted the reform on their territory, which were not guided by its proposals, but they used the conflict with Kovalchuk with the RAS comprehensively.

ITEP

Scientists at the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics are on the alert: they protest against the transfer of their native institution under the aegis of the Kurchatov Institute and under the leadership of Mikhail Kovalchuk. In 2012, the site "Save ITEP" was even created, where letters were posted to all Russian politicians, the Prime Minister and the President. More than a thousand scientists signed them, a third of the Institute's scientific staff, including. The petition was signed even by Nobel laureates from America, who consider ITEP to be one of the world's foremost institutions.

The letter says that this act is equivalent to closing NASA in the US, and the Max Planck Institute in Germany. That is the scale of this institute - the ITEP, founded for nuclear research in 1945, which operated as part of Rosatom. In addition to him, Kurchatov Institute also included two other leading research institutes in the field of biology and physics. The goal of such a merger is the claims of scientists to create an alternative to the RAS because Academician Mikhail Kovalchuk was unable to become an academician. And it is impossible to lead the Academy of Sciences without this title.

Another point of view

The press service did not comment on the situation in connection with the scandal surrounding the Kurchatov Institute, citing the fact that the country's power not only wants to achieve sustainable modernization, but also to achieve a technological breakthrough in one or several directions at the same time. So far, the information collected does not provide Mikhail Kovalchuk with the title of successful manager. Prospects, he draws rainbow, in fact, huge, especially in terms of nanotechnology and hybrid anthropomorphic systems (robots).

Studies are conducted, but incredible results in this life are not foreseen to us, maybe in the next. Objective information, which judges the effectiveness of scientific works, is the number of publications. The budget of the Kurchatov Institute only in 2012 exceeded seven billion rubles, now, of course, more. Nevertheless, it is considerably inferior in the number of publications to very many universities and a number of research institutes. Moreover, during the time of Kovalchuk's leadership the Kurchatov Institute fell very much.

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