Zhukhovitsky miraculously escaped the sad fate of many Russian scientists who were sent to the Gulags. During the war and afterwards, he fruitfully served the needs of the military, and that may have made a difference. For example, for many years he studied the questions of adsorption protection from chemical agents, at the Central Military Scientific Research Technical Institute (TsNIIVTI).
Almost 60 years after Dubinin’s provocative article was published, I was holding those very Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. in my hands, in the New York Public Library. I can’t tell you how mean-spirited and vile it was for me!
I met with Dubinin only once, and I was struck by his “flexibility”. While I was writing my doctoral dissertation, I had to study the adsorption dynamics of soman and sarin on carbon adsorbents. I was working with a gas chromatography (GC) method for analysis, in order to avoid mistakes in the calculation of equilibrium concentrations. I selected samples from the gas stream coming out of the adsorption tube, with determined concentrations of soman and sarin in them, and then I recorded the so-called adsorption fronts. When I tried to process the same results using Dubinin’s equation, using all the corrections he had suggested, everything was excellent and my data fit this equation, but the final constants were much larger than the author had suggested. Nobody could explain to me what the problem was.
Then I decided to ask Dubinin himself about it. One day, when he was at a meeting of the Science Council of GOSNIIOKhT, I asked him to find some time for me. He agreed and I briefly explained my difficulties. He didn’t suggest anything reasonable in response, but he wisely remarked that sometimes an experiment was worth many theories. Professor Nikolaev from the Academy of Chemical Defense overheard our conversation and hurried to rescue his boss. He explained that I had worked with small concentrations, and the equation was meant for large concentrations.
In fact, I had worked with a wide range of concentrations, from large to micro-concentrations. But this argument had no relevance because I had to defend my doctoral dissertation. I had already gone through so many difficulties, that I decided not to acquire an adversary.
It proved to be no easy task for me to part from my former supervisor, Professor Sokolov. It wasn’t difficult to get a new scientific supervisor, because it seemed that the directorate of the institute understood the situation very well. At that time, Andrei Bashkirov, who was a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R., was very well respected among scientists. He advised me bluntly, “Run away from Sokolov before it is too late!”
For some reason, my youthful enthusiasm often tripped me up at crucial moments in my life, and it nearly nipped my scientific career in the bud. Since I had spent long hours in the library with the scientific literature, I also had the time to study the works of Sokolov. In fact, there were quite a lot of them. He had written more than ten books and other publications.
Nevertheless, the more I read, the deeper my feeling of “Deja vu” became. I had already seen it all before somewhere else. Finally, in R.M. Barrer’s book “Diffusion in and Through Solids” (Cambridge University Press, 1951, in Russian trans.) I found whole pages, with notes from Sokolov, asking his typist to copy out sections without any changes. Sometimes, the professor wrote “let us suppose” above “let us assume” of the original text, or “thus” above the word “consequently”. Then instructions followed to copy “from” and “up to”, so that they could copy from another book without acknowledging the original author. This was the story behind each of my supervisor’s books.
I was shocked and miserable about my discovery, because I knew that I wouldn’t be able to keep quiet, when the facts cried out scandalous plagiarism. This was certain to disrupt my “peaceful” life. I shared my discovery only with a few people, who strongly recommended that I remain completely silent, “so as not to ruin my life”.
Instead, I went to the editorial office of newspaper Izvestia with copies of my “discoveries”. At that time they published critical articles about this kind of thing. After a long wait in the reception area, the editor on duty asked me in. He listened to me, laughed, and explained that these kinds of cases were so numerous that if they published them all, the newspaper would turn into a chronicle of plagiarism in science.
At the same time, the editor promised to send my papers to the plagiarist’s workplace, so that measures could be taken “on the spot”, as he put it.
Some measures were “taken” – an extended attack against me got underway. Sokolov’s friends, who were famous scientists, came to the institute to have “talks” with me. Some tried to persuade me, while others threatened me directly, saying that my career in science would be over if I didn’t withdraw my petition.
Once I was summoned by the academic secretary of the institute, where I was handed a letter from the USSR Ministry of Geology, signed by the Deputy Minister and sent to me via the Directorate of the institute. It said that I was invited to the ministry to discuss my complaint about Professor Vasili Sokolov. This letter was obviously provocative because I hadn’t officially complained about anyone. The fact that it was addressed to the director of the institute, and not to me directly, showed that the authors of the letter wanted to paint me up as a plotter and a scandalmonger. When Minna Khotimskaya, Dean of the Graduate School, handed me this letter, she made it known there was official dissatisfaction with my behavior, and added that Nikolai Nametkin (a deputy director) was very displeased with me.
I decided to see it through, especially since Zhukhovitsky deeply sympathized with me and supported me after my revelation. I went to the Ministry of Geology, though it was clear to me that the authors of the letter were not going to discuss anything with me. They had a different objective – to discredit me in the eyes of the institute leadership.
The head of the Personnel Department at the Ministry received me, praised Sokolov for a long time, and then recommended that I take my petition back. I suggested in response that the Ministry should say in an official statement that Mirzayanov was wrong. “It is up to the minister to decide!” the official countered arrogantly. Evidently, the minister and academician didn’t agree.
In spite of those problems, all obstacles for the appointment of my new scientific supervisor were lifted, and I had the necessary instruments for my experiments, so I went back to work at the laboratory for days on end.
I came to work at 9 A.M., and left no earlier than 11 P.M., in order to get to the metro station before it closed. At that time, graduate students were allowed to work at the laboratory as long as they could. Around 9 P.M., the electrician on duty usually came and warned that he could cut off the power to the whole building. I always had 100 milliliters of ethyl alcohol ready for that occasion. The electrician was quite happy with this arrangement, and allowed me to work on until midnight.
Of course, it was against the rules to work alone late at night, but the circumstances and my youthful enthusiasm made me bend the rules. Fortunately, this never led to any major accidents, but small incidents did occur. During my experiments, I had to prepare gaseous mixtures of hydrogen with admixtures of different compounds such as methane, carbon monoxide, oxygen, nitrogen, etc. in a steel tank. Then, I pumped this mixture into the measuring tank for further experiments.