On the jubilee of LСTA - MLIT

N.Yu.Shirikova: "I always believe in youth"

We keep publishing memoirs from veterans of the Meshcheryakov Laboratory of Information Technologies, the 60th anniversary of which will be celebrated in 2026. Nellya Yulyanovna SHIRIKOVA that has been working at LCTA-MLIT for 63 years shares her experiences with colleagues today.

- After having graduated with honors from Moscow State University, I wasn't assigned because I was expecting a child. I tried to find a job in Moscow, but it didn't work out until I first heard about JINR in the spring of 1960. They took me a long time to get hired, six months. I arrived and saw that there was practically no staff: several people six or seven years older than us were working there and there were about ten of us in total. The Puzynins had already arrived, Tolya Korneichuk had just finished his postgraduate studies and the rest were school teachers by training. I liked Dubna right away, green, quiet, surrounded by forests. The atmosphere at the Institute was very friendly. I was assigned to the Computational Department of the Laboratory of Theoretical Physics. All of us applying for jobs were paired with physicists. I was sent to the neutron laboratory without asking any questions. And what a welcome there! The laboratory's Deputy Director F.L.Shapiro spoke to me, introduced me to all the staff and introduced I.I.Shelontsev, who I would be working with. Since the work was complex, FLNP Directorate decided that I should work in their laboratory. They assigned me a position and I spent a year and a half there.

In 1965, I had a conflict with them: the Laboratory of Neutron Physics had decided to use a very poor-quality machine for data processing. I considered it a waste of time and refused. Although I later consulted with them, meeting tasks for them and our collaboration continued and continues to this day. Once, I arrived at the machine and in front of me, a young physicist was entering his deck of punched cards five times in a row. I was surprised; I'd never seen anything like that before. I offered to help him and wrote a small programme so that his task only had to be entered once. After that, he invited me to work in their group. This was the theorist F.A.Gareev. And I began working with the theorists until we obtained a CDC 6200 machine. Before that, ten of us were selected for courses. We hadn't even seen the machine yet; we had lectures in English for six hours a day and were given homework. The courses ended, the machine arrived at JINR and an American resident arrived with it to monitor whether we were using it for military calculations. The resident usually worked for about a year. Then they were replaced. The relationship, initially strained, quickly became very good: they helped us and we helped them. I even had to treat them - someone for an upset stomach, someone for cervical radiculitis. After visiting our clinic, the Americans were amazed at the free medical care. And we parted as practically friends.

- You worked in a group headed by V.G.Solovev. Tell us about that period, your colleagues and the tasks, please.

With V.G.Solovev

For a series of investigations completed in V.G.Solovev's group that started in 1965, we were awarded the first JINR Prize in 1976 and many years later, for carrying out this investigation, we were awarded again. I returned to Solovev for the second time in 1980. He approached me on the street once and asked, "Hey, would you like to work with us?" Solovev decided to rewrite an old programme written by the group. I rewrote it, working in tandem with a young theoretical researcher A.V.Sushkov that was assigned to assist me. V.G.Solovev and I worked together until his death. I was always simultaneously working at LCTA, consulting on both programmes and computers and never turning down anyone who asked for my help. I was always surrounded by very talented people, who I found it very interesting with; all my partners were excellent. I am probably the only woman at JINR that has worked with a man my entire life and has always sat in a room with men.

We developed a huge suite of programmes based on the Solovev prototype of the nucleus. His investigations were so in demand that in the final years of his life, former CERN director H.Schopper visited him and offered to collaborate on a three-volume work on the structure of the atomic nucleus. We worked on the volume together, but it was published after Vadim Georgievich's death. I later worked with R.V.Jolos, working on heavy-nucleus calculations and collaborating with the Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions. I still have a position and a computer at the Laboratory of Theoretical Physics and I also work from home.

- Let's go back 60 years...

In 1966, a new laboratory was organized at JINR - the Laboratory of Computing Techniques and Automation that incorporated the JINR Computing Centre, established in 1962 on the basis of the Department of Computational Mathematics and Computing Machines at the Laboratory of Theoretical Physics. Fortran had appeared back in 1948, but there was absolutely no information about it in the USSR. In 1960, ALGOL was developed, then a translator for it was developed and everyone came alive. We wrote the first version of the programme for theoreticians in ALGOL. In 1965, Govorun returned from CERN and told us: "Guys, there's a much simpler language!" Fortran was developed specifically for programming physics problems. Govorun was so fascinated by it that he promoted it as much as he could. He persuaded V.P. Shirikov to lecture on Fortran on Central Television. How Govorun got on television, I don't know, he just told us: "Slava will go and lecture." And he did. Moreover, I believe they were shown not during the day, but in the evening. Afterwards, Vladislav Pavlovich received an offer to publish these lectures. I tried to persuade him, offered to help him with it, but he refused to "waste time on such nonsense". However, our fellow teachers G.L.Semashko, A.I.Saltykov and G.I.Makarenko that taught Fortran at the school, even wrote three textbooks that enjoyed great popularity.

In 1962, Govorun made his first attempt to teach programming to children in city schools. I don't know why, but he chose me first for this job. He didn't check how or what I taught them, but the children became interested in programming. Later, Inna Kukhtina and Taya Puzynina joined me. And Galya Semashko and Sasha Rakitsky that had returned to teaching at school, became our most important teachers. My mother was a teacher and she would sometimes share stories from school life at home and how they turned out to be teachers, so I had some theoretical experience. And then I gained practical experience - I visited the school twice and later, taught at the Moscow State University Institute of Nuclear Physics.

With Yu.A.Tumanov

Before the development of the operating system "Dubna", various institutes in the USSR had their own operating systems and wrote various programmes that couldn't be used elsewhere. When we developed the operating system "Dubna" and adapted the CERN programme library, we distributed these programmes throughout the country. It was a big deal.

At that time, there were BESM-6 Users Association conferences, modeled after the CDC Users Association conferences. I didn't attend the BESM-6 conferences and my first CDC Users Association Conference was a meeting in Norway. A man, clearly a prominent figure in the Association, delivered his lecture very quickly and I understood almost nothing. I approached him afterward, told him that lectures aren't delivered so quickly and asked for the text. A few days later, he gave it to me and when we met at the next conference, he approached me and asked if he had delivered the report correctly this time.

On the CDC-6500 computer. The Shirikov family and cameraman L.A.Soboleva

N.N.Govorun was very energetic; I've never met anyone so enthusiastic. He was passionate about anything. He was very humane in his dealings with people. I once upset him. Communist Labor Brigades were being organized at the time. He became engrossed in it, as he was in everything. We decided to play a joke on our chief systems engineer I.N.Silin and gave him the lyrics to the Communist Brigades' anthem, telling him that Govorun had ordered him to memorize it. An hour later, a bewildered Govorun came to us and asked, "Guys, do you know what happened? Silin just came running to me, cursing profusely!"

I couldn't admit to him that it was my idea. We were all a bit of a troublemaker back then; we were all 25 years old. By 1 April, we'd published an issue of the wall newspaper "VriImpulse" and there was always someone who took everything in it at face value. Back then, all the laboratories published wall newspapers. They held competitions and we went to read newspapers from other laboratories. For the Institute's anniversary, we always held evenings of amateur performances by the laboratories, followed by a joint concert. The winners of the interlaboratory competition were awarded prizes. So, as winners, we went to the Bolshoi Theater to see a ballet. That was the general atmosphere, we worked from morning until night and had a blast.

At first, we wrote the programmes ourselves, punched the cards and ran them on the machine. If they gave two or three hours to work on the computer at two in the morning, you had to be at your desk by nine in the morning. Work on the machine "Kyiv", for example, could start at nine in the morning and finish at nine the next morning. This computer was very sensitive to power surges and worked well at night, when the Central Electronic Machine Shop machines were turned off. Govorun saw how exhausted we were and he insisted on hiring a staff of computer operators, so we would stop working on the machine at night. He did a good job.

I had a special relationship with Mikhail Grigorievich because I taught his daughter programming. And he had a special relationship with me. He knew his own worth and if he decided on something, he followed through with it - a character of iron. He was a rock. For his 70th birthday, the girls and I bought him 70 carnations and a napkin with our signatures embroidered on it. Buying so many flowers in 1980 was no easy feat. Directorate gave me a car and a letter asking the directorate of the state farm near Klin to sell me flowers. And for N.N.Govorun's 50th birthday, we spent almost a month preparing. We came up with the idea of having the employees' children congratulate him. Shirikov wrote poems and the children recited them. Nikolay Nikolaevich was delighted. We came up with something special for every anniversary. For the New Year, we staged plays in the laboratory; someone wrote the lyrics, someone acted and I was the designer and costume designer.

20th anniversary of LCTA. V.P.Shirikov with his sons Anton and Arkady

In 1965, I was persuaded to work for the JINR Housing Committee. I didn't like the way they organized their work. I proposed writing a programme to optimize it and I.I. Shelontsev, who I shared a room with, helped me. When personal computers appeared, I wrote a programme for it and ultimately streamlined the process, making it more convenient for the committee members to work. I also once asked the Administrative Director V.L.Karpovsky to look at the visitor log for the central directorate. I analyzed the visits, which laboratories from, how many employees and what issues they addressed and drew conclusions about how the deputy directors of the relevant laboratories worked and whether this visitor reception was necessary at the central directorate.

- What advice would you give to young people just starting out in science?

- I'm very glad, the Institute has become younger, but these young people have arrived at a difficult time: we're surrounded by information overload, with such a variety of translators and languages, it's a real challenge. I hope they can handle it. The main thing is to complete the assigned tasks.

- What would you wish your colleagues in the year of the laboratory's 60th anniversary?

- Our spirit has been preserved, I think everything will be fine. I always believe in young people. I wish everyone prosperity and further support of the flag raised 60 years ago.

Transcribed by Olga TARANTINA;
photo from Nelli SHIRIKOVA's archive.