Blessed memory for KOBUSHKIN VICTOR K. - physics
teacher specialized physical-mathematical boarding school ¹ 45 at Leningrad State
University. A.A. Zhdanov.
Teaching process may be very different.
You can "read all your speech from your papers" slightly yawning and causing many
sadness on pupils. But you can work wonders!
And you can do your wonders so, that even now,
after 35 years, I remember given me lessons so as if it were yesterday...
Every branch of physics was for him sole and
unique. Unique was also a school where he worked. Was unique and his own style of
teaching.
At the course of the presentation ceremony he
could jump up to the pulpit and, slapping himself knee, stretch out his hand forward (as
Lenin on the armored car), explaining to us how in the mechanics can be defined (indicated)
the location of an object in space. When it came to motion of the planets, he is like a stone
in a sling, flailed and twiddled over his head nut tied to a cord...
It should be noted that in our special school, we
were learned with the help of a special course, which in the printed version did not exist.
Therefore, all the phisics lections we recorded into our copy-books, representing a total
of 96 sheets.
When there was a test-lesson, and such
test-lessons were carried out there after the passage of each new topic, our copy-books
we were obliged to keep in a closed form on the corner of his desk.
After his initial greeting the teacher
announced his first question and opened a magazine of our class. You might think
that every pupil at this time was shaking "like an aspen leaf" out of fear that teachers
finger will stop on his name. No way! We have been explained previously, that the test
will be conducted from the top down in strict accordance with the alphabetical arrangement
of names of students...
"Ahonen", - he read. Then the girl, whos name
in the list was first, got up and timidly started to answer this question. The quality of her
response immediately reflected on the face of our teacher. "This is a response to a "three
grade", - he said, then immediately recorded the assessment in a magazine and called the
next on the list of students to answer the same question. This continued up until he heard
no response that satisfied him. After that he put a new question and continued to poll
on.
This may sound strange, but during a lesson
each of the 35 pupils received exactly three estimates, which fairly well reflected the
level of our knowledge. If in the course of the test the teacher noticed that someone is
peeking into his own copy-book, he immediately exhibited the "Five", which was
accompanied by an explanation: "You wanted "five", - get it, please!" All our further
perplexity and our searches for the "special marks" next to such a "fives" were
unsuccessful. On our tricky questions about such "fives" with the simple-hearted smile
he said: "Assessment should not be an end in itself, more importantly, what will remain
in your head!.."
But the most interesting in this story - annual
test! We all on the eve studied the phisics "till the blue in the face." And that day has
arrived. Our closed copy-books are stacked in the corners of tables, each feels some
"jim-jams". Teacher says: "As all you studied well, then to all those who value their
knowledge on "three", I am ready to immediately mark down these estimates and
release them from further suffering..." Found seven volunteers. All they got "three"
and they were "released to the freedom".
Then the teacher said: "I feel that all in a
class are well prepared, so if someone assesses his own knowledge on "four", you can
now go to me and get your deserved the "fours", but with others we will talk in more
detail.
Twenty-three people (including me) did so,
after which they were free. In those five, who remained in the classroom and assessed
their own knowledge on the "excellent" on his forehead appeared sweat beads, but they
were ready to "fight like lions" to confirm their excellent knowledge of the material!
The teacher smiled, looking at them and said:
"Guys, I believe you, you really know the material at the "excellent", so come here and
get your well-deserved "fives".
At this annual test in physics was over.
Since then, it took many years. He, Ph.D., often
was not been understood by his superiors, had abandon the pedagogy, and became a bus
driver. If he were alive today he would be "under eighty". But all good is short-lived - he
had long since died of a heart attack, although the charge of energy that emanated from
him, in many of his pupils is still alive up to the present time.
Mathematics in our boarding school taught
Ionin Yuri Iosifovich. He taught us well, he actually taught "as a mathematician".
Of course, we could not always keep track of all flights of his mathematical thought, but
we received good knowledges and could continue to qualify for training in the most
prestigious universities on the subject.
But Ionin Y.I. had only one flaw, but about
this flaw, we learned much later. For us, it was then "luminary of mathematical thought".
And it turned out, he was simply a Jew. Do not get me wrong. The boarding school
was for us as a native home, where no one "absolutely had no nationality". And that
Ionin Y.I. was, unfortunately, a Jew, we have learned twenty years later (in 1988) from
him, when he, with all his mathematical self-restraint, began to complain that him is
simply not allowed to work.
Incidentally, my best friend - Dokshitser J.L. -
in the same year, at his work (in theoretical physics) too became feel himself not very
comfortable...
"Such time then was," - explained to all the
guards of Pilate, when them reproached the crucifixion of Christ. Roughly the same
manner explained their actions and those people, who at the Great Patriotic War were
the policemen Germans...
In short: in 1988 was found that for Jews in
our country places, like, not. And they became looking for places in other states...
Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics Ionin Y.I.
began to taught math at San Francisco (USA).
Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics Dokshitser
J.L. began to taught physics at Lund University (Sweden).
But it all would could be otherwise!
P.S.
...So let's bring on the grave of love
Bouquet of blue field flowers,
Let's forget the words "favorite girl", "cute boy"
And don't ask: "Who is to blame for it?"
Life is simple and complicated as the Eiffel Tower,
Our bouquet of blue flowers will become quite yellow.
All things will go away, only memory will be still relievo
As if soles of a new gumshoes.
Our chemistry teacher was somehow "God's
Dandelion", she has always hovered in the clouds. Chemistry she knew perfectly: we could
always to inquire her about the obtaining technology of gunpowder or, for example,
dynamite... And her style of presentation was simply unique. And, if she expounded lesson
material, or responded to our scientific, pseudoscientific, and even "stupid" questions -
cheat sheet ever no enjoyed.
The procedure of writing out estimates was
considered for her as if it was something not completely natural and does not related to
her core business (chemistry).
I recall an interesting case.
Lesson basically ended. In this lesson she, as usual, showed us her series of brilliant
chemical experiments, so a tripod with a test tube, flask, reagents were still standing on
her huge desk.
We surrounded our teacher by dense ring and
she enthusiastically answered all our many questions.
Meanwhile, "the young experimenter" Anatoly
Ignatieff triple folded strip of celluloid and put it in a test tube with some kind liquid and
furiously began to warm up it on some spiritlamp.
After about a minute in vitro something began
to seethe and out of it climbed some kind "black foam". The most interesting thing that
methylated spirit was immediately extinguished, but "the black porridge" continued to
climb and climb out of the tube, exactly as some porridge (can not remember which) in
the famous fairy tale about a magic pot.
In the end, with a powerful jet of water from
the tap "magic process" was somehow stopped, after which our teacher finally "ceased
Twitter", and our experimenter Tolia was forgiven.
In Physics and Mathematics boarding school,
where I once studied, all things were not usual. Unusually there were all the pupils (for
admission to the boarding school each of us passed special exams and was selected with
the rigorous competition), not usual was the very building in Leningrad on the Savushkina
street (large gray building with bas-reliefs of prominent scientists on the front) and not usual
there were teachers too...
Is the lesson of literature. Natalia Pavlovna (her
figure inspired us to affectionate nickname "bun" for her) introduces us to the works of
disgraced earlier the poet Mayakovsky.
At some of the turning points of script lesson she
suddenly announces: "I will now read you some strings from one poem, and you'll try to
explain me that was embedded in these verses, what are they written about..."
...And you could play a nocturne
On a drainpipe flutes?
There was dead silence. Natalia Pavlovna tried to
"shake up" with her question of one or the other pupil, but received in return only that
something like this: "On Poetry.., about life, and so forth".
Some time later, when she was apparently tired
of asking us, arised her sudden burst: "Why, it's poems about the love! About the most
usual love of man to woman! Can not you understand that?..".
At that far times we couldn't understand THIS.
By all our soviet ideology we are accustomed to
the fact, that each of us - is "it", were simply shocked by her manner of teaching. Before her
each of us in the formal social situations had habit to feel himself as some "learner-place"
neuter.
About love, we could only dream in our dreams,
in secret walks, but we did not expect that we will openly discuss this topic in our class.
It was she who awakened in our minds the realization that each of us - it is or a man, or a
woman (in the first place!).
I even think that it is at her lesson the first time
I heard this famous phrase: "Everything in the world something worth only in the name
of love!".
History in our boarding school taught Dr. of
History Sciences Naimark Yefim Emmanuilovich. Since then, many years had passed,
but his clear as that of Levitan's voice, I remember very well so far.
What may be new in history? We were the
children of the Soviet Union and we were well aware that "The Party and Lenin - twins"
and that the history of our country (you want, or you not want) is the history of the
Bolshevik Party. So: nothing of it was not on his lessons! But what was there?
It was clear and professionally made the known to all history course of our country.
However, the basic material was often accompanied by a description of interesting facts,
which he meticulously extracted somewhere from the closed funds of the scientific
library of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
From him we have heared, for example, that
in far times Lenin many colleagues considered as "German spy" and they had a good
cause for it. He told us the true story of the death of Friedrich Engels. This story is so
unusual that I want the story briefly tell here.
Friedrich Engels, as we know, was quite rich
and often gave financial assistance to his friend Karl Marx.
When Engels and his wife (and they were the
same age) turned 75 years old, they sat at the table, discussed the life and unanimously
concluded: a man aged 75 have nothing more to do in this world.
After this, together with a meal they took
poison, lay down on their bed and "died in one day", as befits a happy couple.
I wonder what the true story of Engels' death
did not fit into the "Procrustean bed" story of the struggle for world revolution, therefore
in the public sources never before in our country this story had not mentioned.
In 1972 I was a sophomore physics department
of Leningrad State University. Lectures on basic disciplines were there immediately for the
entire flow in a large audience of classical form: huge sloping area with benches for
students to converge to a small horizontal scene, which housed the teacher with his
"props". All this took place in the newly constructed main building of the Physics
Department to a new campus in Old Peterhof, near Leningrad.
Once in the foyer appeared an announcement:
all chess enthusiasts after schools are invited to the lecture hall for a meeting and
conversation with grandmaster G.M. Korchnoi. Believing myself is such chess enthusiast,
I hurried to the meeting. Grandmaster came to us with his guard a bit late (probably to
make himselves more "weight").
As we all know that approaching a decisive
match for the world crown between Spassky and Fischer, naturally, our main questions
to grandmaster reduced to the evaluation of the Fisher personality, his manner of playing,
inclinations, habits, etc. Grandmaster with obvious pleasure satisfied our curiosity.
We learned that Fischer is very self-satisfied
and often rude. All the time he devotes to chess, being distracted from them only to eat,
sleep and other natural needs of the organism. In this case, for example, over lunch at a
restaurant he (one person) occupied two tables that are set for him for very many viands,
often from China. With the waitresses (to their not satisfaction) Fisher speaks little
and dry...
As for chess, then he (Korchnoi) was previously
played with Fischer only two times, and both the games ended in a draw. About the manner
of playing Fischer, grandmaster told us next story about one of their recent party.
"We played recently at the match
in Switzerland. There gathered the most "cream" of the chess world. Before meeting with
Fischer, I, of course, very worried. We with my assistants have studied all the games,
played earlier by Fisher, and to all his possible schemes of the game we produced our
answer options...
My moves I thought through very carefully,
Fisher was reciprocated - the game was very sluggish. Suddenly I got the idea to sacrifice
a pawn. Considering this option within forty-five minutes, I concluded that as a result of
this sacrifice after fourteen or fifteen steps I can obtain good positional advantage.
Offering my sacrifice, I tuned in to a long wait.
Imagine my surprise when, a minute later Fisher had not taken my victim, and chose a
completely other continueing...
In the end, the game ended in a draw, but I
could not relax the whole day and night. Did Fischer analyzes the position so quickly in
comparison to me? Realizing that without knowing the truth, I never shall find peace, I
plucked up courage and turned to Fisher with a question: "Excuse me, grandmaster, I
spent forty-five minutes analising options before you sacrifice a pawn. Why do, thinking
over the offer only a minute, you refused to take my sacrifice?"
Fisher looked at me like to an idiot, and with
a wry grin, replied: "I decided to believe to you!". So chess are chess, but psychology
is the psychology.
Here is this it, this Fisher!».
Meeting of chess fans with Korchnoi continued
somewhere about an hour, after which he said goodbye, put on his gray unremarkable
cloak, and they with a security guard quick steps became moving on their way. I do not
know why, but I was standing on the porch of the main building and still a long time
looking after them...
A few months later grandmaster Korchnoi
went to Sweden and left our country forever.
In the years 1966-67 I was studying in 9 th
grade physical-mathematical boarding school at Leningrad State University A.A. Zhdanov
name. At the same time in one tenth class of this school studied Konstantin Arkadievich
Raikin, today many know him as head of the Arkady Raikin theater. I can not call myself
his friend - we met with him a few times - but I can share you some of my memories
associated with him.
From time to time at the boarding school were
gala evenings, at which were invited these or other art people. Many of the performances
for the evenings were prepared by pupils too. Constantine even then was very artistic, he
had excellent plasticity, lively facial expressions and figurative speech. His "hobby-horse",
however, were the pop numbers of the pantomime.
One of the arrived for our show artist of
pantomime (his name I can not remember) called his attention at Kostya Raikin and
invited him to continue systematic training in this direction under his leadership. To the
surprise of many, Kostya did not agree, answering to this is about the following words:
"Too many artistes on a single family. I decided to devote myself to biology (he was a
pupil of class with a biological incline).
One time and Arkady Raikin came to us for the
evening. He made his show literally within ten minutes - showed us an excerpt from
"Revizor" by Gogol, in which he played the "Hlestakov" role. After the show, Arkady Raikin
immediately left us on a black "Volga", which was waiting for him at the entrance.
We understood that an artist of this magnitude all calculated by the minute, so we were
very excited and this short meeting with the great master.
Who became ultimately "a lover of biology"
Konstantin Raikin, known to all now. Let's remember about this famous saying "Nature is
resting on the children of great men".
This saying is not right! Man to man are different.
Truly great people - and to such is certainly possible to rank and Konstantin Raikin, and
Andrei Mironov - not too dependent on whether their parents were "great people".
Of course, in a certain sense, the son of an
artiste is always easier to go to the artistes than the son, for example, a shoemaker.
However, whether he will a "Great Artiste" depends, of course, not from parents but
from the man himself. It is known that the glory of the parents "crushes" on their
children. And Andrei Mironov, and Kostya Raikin mentioned about this. Then more
valuable is, namely, your OWN glory, if you showed yourself worthy of it!
At the physics department of Leningrad State
University our teacher was physics professor, it was Doctor of Physical and Mathematical
Sciences Nikita Alekseevich Tolstoy. It was the son namely the Tolstoy, who wrote the
novel "Peter Pervij", as well as many other famous works.
Even in those far communist years, we saw
that we face a real aristocrat: his mannerisms, gestures and clothes were immaculate,
every sheet of his lectures was placed in a separate transparent plastic bag (it was very
surprising to us!). Physics he knew perfectly: presentation of the university physics
course and the answers to our questions flowed from him as "a mountain stream".
But Nikita Alekseevich loved and distractions from the main course. Discussions on the
topic of the lecture he often combined with a splash of many extraneous topics that
frequently arised because of our replicas, or just surfaced from the depths of
consciousness of the professor.
Before answering any question, the professor
came to deeply thinking, took out a cigarette and straight at a lecture with relish was
lighting his cigarette from his black "Ronson" for the envy of all students.
To the question, why he put each sheet in a
separate sealed envelope, a professor with a slight smile replied: "Because my course
of lectures not got changes during five years (!?)." After a short pause he continued:
"But after every five years, my course must be revised - because the science does not
stand on place..."
To the exams the professor liked invite many
of his assistants: graduate students, assistants, staff research.
Once I must go to resit exam in physics.
The exam from me took the collaborator of the Department of General Physics, Ph.D.
Spartakov. I was well prepared - the examiner listened to me not very attentively,
suddenly something caught his attention: the girl, who was sitting in the front row,
too rustled a piece of paper under the table.
Humor of the situation consisted in the fact that
all the "secret" manners of preparing for students' answers were clearly visible to the
examiner, which was sitting in front of them. Indeed, under the table top was provided
a convenient gap, that allowed the examiner to fully control the entire process of
preparing the student for the upcoming response.
Spartakov politely asked the girl to go to him
with the piece of paper, which was placed under her top of desk. The most interesting
thing was followed further. It turned out that a sheet of paper containes a complete
physics course per semester, written by a very slim lines.
"You came to resit?" - Asked Spartacov.
"Yes" - answered the girl.
- What is your score was?
- "Four" (!?) (Explanation: The highest mark at the time was the "Five")
- You are free. Your mark now is "Two".
Thus ended for this girl her Autumn physics
resit. I successfully replaced my previous "Two" into desired to me mark "Four".
They say that when, after the fall of the
Communists, aristocrats began to "raise their heads," a delegation came from them
for Nikita Alekseevich, they said a single sentence: Nikita Alekseevich, let invite you
to be the head of our organization, please. You - the hereditary nobleman - give your
consent to become our "nobility leader". At that Nikita Alekseevich not thinking twice
answered: «I am not suitable for this role, because for me Vasilij Shukshin is more
nobleman than most of you...».
Perhaps the "true nobility" precisely in that
man is capable of directly and publicly declare about his position, which is not usual
and not endorsed by the others, - I thought.
Sometime in the early days of Soviet power
Bolsheviks offered for many former czar officers to take the oath of allegiance to the
new Bolshevik government. Most of the officers replied that they had once took the oath
of to the king, and do not have the opportunity to change his oath. They immediately
were shot. Those few who "found such an opportunity," survived and became to serve
the Bolshevik Party. It was they who were recognized as officers the most suitable for
the Soviet Army.
The conclusion is clear...
Teaching process may be very different.
You can "read all your speech from your papers" slightly yawning and causing many
sadness on pupils. But you can work wonders!
But the most interesting in this story - annual
test! We all on the eve studied the phisics "till the blue in the face." And that day has
arrived. Our closed copy-books are stacked in the corners of tables, each feels some
"jim-jams". Teacher says: "As all you studied well, then to all those who value their
knowledge on "three", I am ready to immediately mark down these estimates and
release them from further suffering..." Found seven volunteers. All they got "three"
and they were "released to the freedom".
Mathematics in our boarding school taught
Ionin Yuri Iosifovich. He taught us well, he actually taught "as a mathematician".
Of course, we could not always keep track of all flights of his mathematical thought, but
we received good knowledges and could continue to qualify for training in the most
prestigious universities on the subject.
But Ionin Y.I. had only one flaw, but about
this flaw, we learned much later. For us, it was then "luminary of mathematical thought".
And it turned out, he was simply a Jew. Do not get me wrong. The boarding school
was for us as a native home, where no one "absolutely had no nationality". And that
Ionin Y.I. was, unfortunately, a Jew, we have learned twenty years later (in 1988) from
him, when he, with all his mathematical self-restraint, began to complain that him is
simply not allowed to work.
Our chemistry teacher was somehow "God's
Dandelion", she has always hovered in the clouds. Chemistry she knew perfectly: we could
always to inquire her about the obtaining technology of gunpowder or, for example,
dynamite... And her style of presentation was simply unique. And, if she expounded lesson
material, or responded to our scientific, pseudoscientific, and even "stupid" questions -
cheat sheet ever no enjoyed.
In Physics and Mathematics boarding school,
where I once studied, all things were not usual. Unusually there were all the pupils (for
admission to the boarding school each of us passed special exams and was selected with
the rigorous competition), not usual was the very building in Leningrad on the Savushkina
street (large gray building with bas-reliefs of prominent scientists on the front) and not usual
there were teachers too...
At some of the turning points of script lesson she
suddenly announces: "I will now read you some strings from one poem, and you'll try to
explain me that was embedded in these verses, what are they written about..."
History in our boarding school taught Dr. of
History Sciences Naimark Yefim Emmanuilovich. Since then, many years had passed,
but his clear as that of Levitan's voice, I remember very well so far.
From him we have heared, for example, that
in far times Lenin many colleagues considered as "German spy" and they had a good
cause for it. He told us the true story of the death of Friedrich Engels. This story is so
unusual that I want the story briefly tell here.
In 1972 I was a sophomore physics department
of Leningrad State University. Lectures on basic disciplines were there immediately for the
entire flow in a large audience of classical form: huge sloping area with benches for
students to converge to a small horizontal scene, which housed the teacher with his
"props". All this took place in the newly constructed main building of the Physics
Department to a new campus in Old Peterhof, near Leningrad.
In the years 1966-67 I was studying in 9 th
grade physical-mathematical boarding school at Leningrad State University A.A. Zhdanov
name. At the same time in one tenth class of this school studied Konstantin Arkadievich
Raikin, today many know him as head of the Arkady Raikin theater. I can not call myself
his friend - we met with him a few times - but I can share you some of my memories
associated with him.
One of the arrived for our show artist of
pantomime (his name I can not remember) called his attention at Kostya Raikin and
invited him to continue systematic training in this direction under his leadership. To the
surprise of many, Kostya did not agree, answering to this is about the following words:
"Too many artistes on a single family. I decided to devote myself to biology (he was a
pupil of class with a biological incline).
At the physics department of Leningrad State
University our teacher was physics professor, it was Doctor of Physical and Mathematical
Sciences Nikita Alekseevich Tolstoy. It was the son namely the Tolstoy, who wrote the
novel "Peter Pervij", as well as many other famous works.