V. I. Prikhodko: "MLIT is a basic laboratory"
I came to Dubna on 24 March, 1964, to practice and afterwards, to prepare my thesis at the suggestion of Professor Kronid Eduardovich Erglis that taught us a course on nuclear electronics at MEPhI. He said, "There is a good level of development of electronics, there, you will be in your place. I know Head of the Department of Radio Electronics at FLNP Georgy Ivanovich Zabiyakin, I will organize a meeting and you will agree with him." I met with Zabiyakin on the territory of the Kurchatov Institute, he was satisfied with my candidacy and he invited me to Dubna. I still remember with gratitude his participation in my fate and our few, but extremely warm meetings in the subsequent period.
The three of us came to practice. We were met by Panfilova - a very friendly woman. She asked if we had had lunch, apologized that she could not accommodate us in a comfortable hostel on 5, Mir Street where the renovation was ending. At first, we lived in a barrack at 9, Mokhovaya Street. There were four wooden barracks that were full, mostly, by construction workers. In Moscow, I lived in a hostel on the Zatsepa Street at the Paveletsky Railway Station. You go out into the street - people are constantly scurrying with bags, things, yet, it was quiet here. Two weeks later, we moved to a hostel on Mir Street and the barrack quickly became forgotten. And when I started working at the Institute, we lived in the same room, but together. I really liked Dubna. I fell in love with Dubna immediately and forever. I am almost rustic, born in a small town, pretty tired of living in Moscow. In Dubna, I felt at ease. The city was then low-rise, we called the skyscraper the first ten‑story building that soon appeared on Leningradskaya Street. We liked very friendly and intelligent people. In general, the atmosphere in Dubna was different from Moscow. In our hostel, there was one bicycle for everyone, when it was necessary to go to Moscow, they drove to the train, left it in the bushes and in the evening, they took it and returned to the hostel. There was no theft.
The city had excellent conditions for sports. Just at this time, the recruitment to the GlidIng section of the Dubna Flying Club was announced, where I immediately signed up. After one‑year courses, medical examination and mandatory parachute jumps, independent flights on the KAI‑19 glider began. Flights took place in the vicinity of the city of Kimry at the old alternate airfield where our Flying Club was based. It is difficult to describe the sensations that you experience in free flight. To do this, you need to take off yourself. You need to be a big enthusiast to play gliding. In order to fly on a glider for half an hour, it was necessary to get to the airfield on three buses and still walk more than a kilometer. And often, flights were canceled due to weather conditions. Unfortunately, I managed to "fly" only 30 hours, later, the Flying Club was closed due to a series of accidents.
In Dubna, I was attracted by the surrounding forests and expanses of water - the Volga, Dubna and Sestra rivers, as well as the Moscow Sea. I became interested in fishing and later, in picking mushrooms and in these activities, I achieved some success.
Even before defending my diploma at the commission for distribution, I was asked where I wanted to work. I replied that in JINR. They told me that they were distributing me to the A‑3334 mailbox. But I insisted that I wanted to go to Dubna, to JINR. It turned out that the A-3334 mailbox and JINR were one and the same. The supervisor of my thesis was V. G. Tishin, a great specialist and a very good person. Once, during the preparation of my thesis, the secretary I. M. Franca invited me to Ilya Mikhailovich that said that he had received a letter from Director of the Laboratory of Nuclear Problems V. P. Dzhelepov with an urgent request to return the student Prikhodko to his laboratory, since he had arrived at JINR at their request. Ilya Mikhailovich (thank you so much!) said that the choice was mine and he would support any of my decisions. I stayed in the Laboratory of Neutron Physics. The topic of the diploma was the input device of the amplitude analyzer. The device with a record number of channels at that time was 8192. The work was interesting. I defended my diploma at JINR with a rating of "excellent" and on 28 August, 1965, I started working at the Laboratory of Neutron Physics. By the way, I have recently celebrated my 60th labor anniversary.
In 1966, the Laboratory of Computing Techniques and Automation was established at JINR, which G. I. Zabiyakin moved to the post of Deputy Director to. In March 1969, he invited me to work at LCTA. By this time, I had completed work on my thesis and was ready to change the subject and situation. The thesis was based on the short‑term development of multichannel analyzers, automated systems for accumulating and pre-processing spectrometric data, algorithms and correction programmes and calibration of amplitude spectra. My supervisors were V. G. Tishin and G. P. Zhukov that for a long time, headed the Department of Radio Electronics at FLNP. A successful defense was held in May 1969, at the joint dissertation council of FLNR and FLNP. At the defense, during the break of the dissertation council meeting, I. M. Frank and F. L. Shapiro approached me, congratulated me on the successful defense and expressed the hope that I would someday return to FLNP. How they predicted it!
Our joint work with G. I. Zabiyakin at LCTA lasted about three years. It seems that in 1972, he became Chief Engineer of JINR but soon, left for Moscow (to the Institute of Control Problems, later, quickly exchanged it for the Institute of Space Research but something did not work out there either). He was a participant in the Great Patriotic War, after which he graduated from MEPhI and worked in FLNP from the day it was founded. His character was not mild, but he was a strong, purposeful person, a famous scientist in the field of nuclear electronics, a Doctor of Technical Sciences (in those times, it was a rarity, Doctors in this specialty could be counted on the fingers). Unfortunately, he died a relatively young man.
Another Deputy Director was Nikolay Nikolaevich Govorun. It turned out that they were both my fellow countrymen. Zabiyakin was born in Lugansk, Govorun - in a small village in the Luhansk Region, not far from the town of Zorinsk, where I was born. Nikolay Nikolaevich was a completely different person, both in character and in upbringing and in life and in his specialty and in merits. He was a real intellectual, it was very pleasant to work with him. Nikolay Nikolaevich did a great job in the Laboratory. He was in charge of several departments and he had intelligent students, almost all of them became Doctors of Science. One of the most striking results of the investigation of Nikolay Nikolaevich and his students was the development of the operating system “Dubna” that was installed on the BESM‑6 - the best machine of that time in the USSR. Govorun's contribution to these investigations is invaluable.
And the Laboratory was headed by Mikhail Grigorievich Meshcheryakov, a legendary man, he deserves a separate conversation. Here, I can only say that in LCTA, he was in place and today, the Laboratory rightfully bears his name. It is very nice to see that the memory of the founding fathers is carefully honored in the Laboratory.
Recently, MLIT has celebrated the 95th anniversary of the birth of N. N. Govorun. Many warm words were said by Directorate, employees, guests but in my opinion, they forgot about one important job. This is the development of an inexpensive microprocessor analogue of a computer BESM&38209;6, one might say, a desktop version of this machine that at that time, was widely used in scientific and industrial organizations of the USSR. Carrying out this development would make it possible to radically update the hardware base and to use without changes all the libraries of programmes developed for BESM‑6. A team was assembled for this task that included I. N. Silin, the spouses Sapozhnikovs, I. A. Emelin, V. M. Kadykov and my employee F. V. Levchanovsky. They quickly developed and debugged the layout, at one of the plants of the Minradioprom a prototype was created that was also tested at LCTA. The tests were successful. It was a brilliant result! But then the era came when it was argued that everything can be bought in the West. Life refuted this claim but mass production never began. For JINR, the loss of this development was not vital but Nikolay Nikolaevich thought "like a state" and was very sorry for the "failure" that had happened.
I would like to talk separately about Feodosia Vasilievich Levchanovsky. I met him when he was a student at the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute and did an internship at DLNP. At that time, at the request of G. I. Zabiyakin, I helped to automate the microphotometer in this Laboratory. We automated the process of reading and processing beta spectra registered on glass plates. Previously, this routine had been done by female operators. The microphotometer was the topic of Feodosia Vasilievich's thesis and a part of my thesis. I was the supervisor of his graduation paper, later, of his thesis, although he did not really need a supervisor because he was an outstanding specialist, a talented engineer with tremendous labor productivity. His thesis, defended in 1981, was dedicated to the development of a number of graphic displays for various types of computers at LCTA. In the 1990s, he worked for a year in Germany, there were very high opinions about him. Unfortunately, he passed away a few years ago. We received sincere condolences from our German colleagues, as well as from colleagues from other JINR Laboratories who FLNP collaborated with. And the "legacy" of Feodosia Vasilievich - unified modules of data aqcistion and accumulation systems, to the development of which he made a decisive contribution, are still used on spectrometers of the IBR‑2 reactor, as well as in the Gan-Meitner Institute (Berlin).
From 1969 to 1993, I worked at LCTA as a researcher, a senior researcher and Head of Sector. During this time, a number of graphic display developments had been carried out in the Sector under my supervision and with direct participation, television monitoring systems for optical track detectors for RISK, MIS at the U‑70 accelerator in Protvino and GEBS at Nuclotron in LHEP and later, with the participation of my employees V. A. Butenko, V. A. Drozdov and A. S. Kirilov, a system for filmless data readout from a streamer chamber was developed under the DUBTO project (supervisor - D. B. Pontecorvo).
We developed an intelligent graphics terminal with a built‑in special processor that provided the complete image generation, their transformation and movement. At that time, a rather large group of German colleagues worked in my Sector. They were employees of the ROBOTRON plant, a large electronics company in the GDR that was interested in this development. We delivered them a copy of such a terminal and they barter for us - two small computers K‑1630, an analogue of Digital's PDP computer. But then the unification of the GDR and the FRG broke out. The German group was recalled to its homeland, Germany left the Institute but became its "sponsor" - the BMBF Foundation was established, annually transferring a contribution to JINR for joint research with research centres in Germany.
The situation at the Institute was very difficult, the socialist camp broke up, at the same time, Hungary left JINR. The financial situation was very difficult, practically, no money was allocated for scientific research. I received an offer from Victor Lazarevich Aksenov, then Director of FLNP, to go to them and to head the Department of Radio Electronics, the Department where I came as a trainee and a graduate student. I agreed on the condition that all my employees who want to do it go with me. As a result, all the main employees of the Sector moved with me. Prior to that, extremely benevolent negotiations were held with Director of LCTA Rudolf Pose, he agreed to our transfer together with the salary fund, with all control and measuring equipment and even with office furniture. Then, in conditions of lack of money, it was a generous gift. We are still grateful to Rudolf Pose for this gesture. May God grant him health and long years of a happy life!
At FLNP, we immediately prepared a project for the development of the measuring and computing complex of the Laboratory, received funding from the BMBF fund and subsequently constantly received funding for the development of equipment for neutron research at the IBR‑2 reactor almost until the end of the existence of this fund. Two generations of systems for storage and processing data from all 14 IBR-2 spectrometers were developed. Moreover, all equipment is unified. We have unified all the automation systems of spectrometers - systems for changing temperature, magnetic field, pressure. Everything was done with maximum focus on industrial equipment. We did a good job and for a good reason.
The Institute and its important component - MLIT survived in troubled times. To date, JINR has developed and currently develops an advanced information and computing infrastructure that ensures high‑level research in the main activities of the Institute that is the result of the selfless work of the Laboratory staff, as well as moral and material support for these investigations by Directorate. To this, I would add the personal contribution of Vladimir Vasilievich Korenkov that for a long time, has worked as Deputy Director and Director of MLIT and today, is Scientific Leader of the Laboratory.
When LCTA was being organized, we were always "visiting" - at first, we settled in the building No. 34 of DLNP. By order of N. N. Bogolyubov, the premise was removed, the DLNP was offended for a long time. Some of the employees resided in BLTP, the offices of some employees were located in the laboratories which they processed data for. Then, DLNP borrowed part of the premises in the building 113. Finally, in 1983, a new building was built, we helped to build it. It was designed for computers that increased in size with increasing power. Today, they are becoming more powerful and smaller, so there is a stock of space. The atmosphere in the Laboratory was very good. Here, at all times, there have been many beautiful women. I was pleased to work in your staff. And today, there are excellent conditions, a good staff, interesting tasks, beautiful women.
I wish the youth of MLIT health and interesting work. I remind you that revolutions constantly take place in the IT sphere and in order to always be at your best, you need to learn, learn, learn...
I wish the colleagues in the year of the anniversary to continue in the same spirit. I want to wish all the best to our Laboratory, I am emphasizing - to our Laboratory. Today, MLIT is one of the most important components of the JINR infrastructure, along with the reactor and accelerators. This is a basic laboratory that provides the work of each employee: experimenters, theorists, Office services.
Recorded by Olga TARANTINA,
Photos from the archive of Valentin PRIKHODKO