Science journalist Irina Yakutenko about favorite books
IN BACKGROUND "BOOK SHELF" we ask journalists, writers, scholars, curators, and other heroines about their literary preferences and publications, which occupy an important place in their bookcase. Today, Irina Yakutenko, a molecular biologist and scientific journalist, shares her stories about favorite books. Irina worked as a science editor at "Tapes.ru", led the "Around the World" science department and was the publishing editor of "TASS: Science" ("Attic"). In addition, she founded the Russell Teapot promotion agency.
Bookcases stuffed from bottom to top, I have no parents right now at home - the lack of a permanent library is connected with the nomadic way of life and the fact that I read a lot in electronic form. Now I read mostly non-fiction - it is always an accessible and relevant source of knowledge in order to understand how things are now in a particular field of science. This reading is not only fun - I need the knowledge to work, so I successfully manage to combine business with pleasure.
I am a typical child from the family of the Soviet technical intelligentsia. Dad is a physicist, mom is an engineer. Familiar and friends of the family - scientists, engineers, and those working somewhere at the junction - did not discuss Akhmatova and Novy Mir, but scientific issues (and of course politics, but this is another story). Mind and erudition were always in priority: to know a little was a shame by default.
One of the books that I read quite early and which I terribly liked was the 1966 collection of Physicists Joking: humorous sketches about the life and customs of scientists. This is such a typical geek book for initiates: a person from the outside will most likely not understand what is funny here, but a child from a family of scientists from such books absorbs the spirit of this environment. I cannot say that the book turned my world upside down, but it definitely influenced my outlook: I in absentia loved the authors and scientists in general, their thinking and internal jokes for theirs.
From childhood I knew for sure that I would study only at Moscow State University, and nowhere else, but I chose the faculty, rather, by the exception method - discarding those where I did not want to study. As a result, she chose a biofac, and later, more consciously, and a specialty - molecular biology. Despite the fact that biofak lacks relevance - there are no courses that would tell you what science looks like and what it does today - it gives a holistic view of the world around us: we were taught not only biology, but chemistry of all kinds, physics, and math. As a result, graduates have a broad outlook, they are not flux-like narrow specialists, sharpened under the cathedral specialty, but people who understand in general how the world is organized at various levels: from molecules to classes of living beings. At the third course, it became clear to me that I did not want to be a scientist, although with science everything worked out. Scientists are simply engaged in digging one small thing deeply: they take a narrow topic and find out everything about it, but for me, according to my character, it is not close.
I began to study science journalism spontaneously nine years ago, when I came to Lentu.ru as a news editor. At about the second week it became clear that it was foolish not to use for that purpose the baggage of knowledge that I have, and so I became a scientific editor. The more I worked, the more I discovered how amazing and diverse the scientific world was - almost no one told about all these miracles at school or at the university. We study according to programs, at best, 20 years ago, or even half a century, and the actual aspirations of science remain out of sight. The current education does not give a holistic picture of the world, does not indicate which directions are the most relevant today, does not tell where progress is moving. To stay in the stream, I read a lot of different non-fiction. Today, high-quality - and, importantly, well-translated - scientific publications are published by Alpina non-fiction, Corpus, AST. Always a good choice - books with Dynasty nameplate, their famous tree.
My profession perfectly matches the structure of my brain: in order to work, I need to know quite a lot in very different areas, and at the same time I switch from topic to topic all the time. A scientific journalist should be able to understand difficult issues quickly - digging in for several months to write one good text, ideally, perhaps correctly, but in practice does not work. If only because all these months a journalist needs something to eat, and there are not so many who want to pay for the wait. The second quality necessary for a person who writes about science is the ability to tell about what he figured out, so that everyone else would also find it interesting and creepy to know what is inside a neutron star or why centipedes have so many legs. This talent is much less common.
My brain is designed in such a way that my emotional side is not very well developed - not least because of this, I do what I do. I will not tell you the books that "turned my life upside down", "plowed from top to bottom" - they are not. As there are no answers to your questions "my favorite book." Fiction appeals primarily to the emotional sphere, according to Zabolotsky, it forces my soul to work, but art books have not brought me any super-revelations. Although I read the same "Fathers and Children" sitting on a bench in the subway - because I could not stop. Surely fiction (especially the notorious VLR - Great Russian Literature, where without it) had an impact on me, but this is the cumulative effect, I can’t name any individual extremely important books for me.
Now I am much more interested in texts that show the amazing perfection of the scientific picture of the world, its logic and beauty, when all elements are intertwined and interconnected with each other.
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
"Monday starts on Saturday"
When I was a teenager, I wanted my future to be like the world of "Monday ..." of the Strugatskys. An idealized scientific institute, in which tightly confused people spend days in things that they are interested in, drink liters of coffee and smoke endlessly, trying to resolve the main issues of the universe. The book is excellent lay on the teenage throwing to find the meaning of life - with something than, and with him the characters had no problems. And the handsome scientist Roman Oira-Oira became the first literary hero for whom I sighed. Instead Ivanhoe or Onegin.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
"GULAG Archipelago"
Boris Grebenshchikov, whom I love very much, said (or rather sang): "There are books for the eyes and books in the shape of a pistol." Most books are for the eyes, they can be lively, entertaining, intriguing, but they pass as it were on the surface of consciousness. And there are books, having read that you will not be the same. I began to read "The Gulag Archipelago" more or less by accident - it was preloaded into the reader I bought. Starting, could not stop.
The book is monstrously written: Solzhenitsyn clearly needs an editor. But her reading is an indescribable experience. "Archipelago ..." takes its inordinate volume, this is the case when the quantity goes into quality. You read, and on every page the horror, it multiplies, multiplies, it seems to you that everything is enough, there can no longer be, there must be a limit - and the book throws on you again and again, and there is no limit.
Today it is fashionable to talk about the return of Stalinism, the effectiveness of governance under Stalin: well, he raised the country from its knees, built factories, spent electricity, taught the country to read, in the end. After the "Gulag Archipelago", all the meaninglessness of such conversations is obvious: there can be no excuse for what they did with people in those years. This becomes as natural an understanding as the understanding that the sun rises in the morning, it is cold in winter, and the sugar is sweet. If more people read "The Archipelago ...", perhaps now everything would be different.
I'm not sure that this book should be included in the school curriculum - rather, it will lead to the fact that the majority will read some brief summary and relate to the book formally - and what else could be the attitude after the “analysis of artistic and compositional originality” and "analysis of the spiritual throwing of the protagonist"? Of course, there are also good teachers of literature, but let's be realistic - this is rather an exception. So this reading should be part of a family or community culture.
Richard Phillips Feynman
"You are joking of course, Mr. Feynman!"
The autobiography of the great physicist, Nobel laureate Richard Feynman is the best way to infect readers with the desire to link their lives with science. Feynman - handsome, musician, witty, versatile, vivacious, womanizer and womanizer - tells how a scientist analyzes the world around him, how he looks at what is happening. But this is not a boring and snobbish boo-boo-boo, but funny stories about the stupidity of the surrounding reality and the non-standard approach to it. A rare chance to see the world of the scientist from the inside, to appreciate the brilliance and play of the mind.
We have thoroughly underestimated such a genre as biographies and autobiographies of scientists - and yet these are extremely useful books that show how the smartest people in the world think. In the school curriculum of autobiographies, as well as the scholarly one, there is none at all - only classics of fiction. This is a big omission. Fiction gives an emotional and imaginative view of things, but says nothing about the scientific approach, does not teach to comprehend reality through science. It is especially useful to know about the alternative view of the world to humanities scholars - a scientific approach to everyday elections will allow you to avoid making mistakes, sometimes very expensive.
Another cool autobiography is Tsiolkovsky's “The Features of My Life” - a gifted, but at the same time obsessed and, in general, insane person, dreamer, who turned out to be a visionary.
Evgeny Komarovsky
"Child health and common sense of his relatives"
I think most parents know this mustache uncle. Komarovsky - a doctor from Kharkov, who wrote a very useful book. How are parental benefits usually written? "It is necessary, it is not necessary, do so, do as I say." Komarovsky is an adherent of the scientific approach. He explains what causes of certain diseases, tells what viruses and bacteria are, how they enter the body, how they develop, and so on. And answering the eternal, invariably causing batthurth questions in the spirit of “Until what age to breastfeed a child?”, Does not rely on someone's hyper-authoritative opinion, but on evolutionary arguments and common sense.
I am impressed when the author does not declare something that we urgently need to believe, not seeking adherents of his theories, but encourages parents to think and analyze what is happening, based on logic, and not on emotions. So that in a difficult situation, dad and mom did not run to the Internet for a ready-made recipe (which one? From whom?), But try to think and figure out what is happening - when you understand it, find the answer to the question "what to do?" much easier.
Julia Gippenreiter
"To communicate with the child. How? We continue to communicate with the child. So?"
Hippenreiter is useful to read even to those who are just thinking about children. The book teaches to understand the motives of the child, to be aware of the causes of the problem behavior. The first emotional reaction, as the psychologist and nobeliat Kaneman calls it the “hot system” (“I would kill this brat!”), Is often wrong - it must be restrained and corrected. But it's just difficult to correct it - training is needed. This book gives the ground, relying on which you can stop yourself and steer yourself in an acute situation in the right direction ("Aha, the very behavior, like Hippenreiter wrote there, its reason is such and such, therefore it is useless to yell, but you need to do something") . Hippenreiter describes how to act when a new crisis is brewing - and in life with a child, oh, how many - leads to possible behaviors and, in fact, does the same as Komarovsky - teaches to think.
Elena Bakanova
"Modern parents. How we actually teach and raise children"
This is again a book about parents and children and again about the need to think - this time not only in specific situations, but also in general about what it is like to be a child in today's world. For the first time in the history of mankind, we found ourselves in a situation where parents who live separately from other relatives, most often one child, on which all attention is focused. A couple of generations ago, there was neither overwhelming care nor early development: children grew up more by themselves, communicated with their peers and all sorts of adults, they quickly became independent - in fact, they simply had no other choice.
Bakanova explains why there is no single answer, how to overcome difficulties between parents and children at the end of the XX century, and does not offer a universal solution: the author examines the essence of the phenomena and gives the reader the opportunity to independently draw conclusions. Bakanova is a supporter of the Montessori method, but not in his sectarian hypertrophied form, but in a reasonable version.
Maria montessori
"My method"
From the very beginning, the Montessori method aroused my suspicion - too many mummies are so blindly committed to it that it scares. To better understand the system, it makes sense to read the book of its founder - the source is always better than retelling. It is quite boring, but everything that is needed is already clear from the first chapters - and this looks quite reasonable and does not resemble a sect (which some of its excessively zealous followers turn into the Montessori method). The essence of the method is very simple: adults should not interfere with the child to master the world on their own, should not shove into him unknown knowledge who would certainly (according to some other anonymous adults) be useful to him.
Maria Montessori urges to carefully observe what attracts the child at this particular moment and gently offer him developmental activities that will satisfy this particular interest. Much attention is paid to practical skills such as washing or washing the floor - agree that this is much more useful than the ability to press the right buttons on an interactive piano. If the child is now interested in mathematical problems, you do not need to force him to sculpt a flower from plasticine, which he does not need in FIG and besides is not molded, because he has not yet developed the motility to the necessary degree. This does not mean that it is not necessary to sculpt the flowers - it is necessary, but then when the body is ripe for the development of fingers.
David Bodanis
"E = mc². A biography of the most famous equation in the world"
This book is an attempt to apply an artistic approach to popular science literature. Usually, the authors of scientific studies, even good ones, do not bother with such subtleties. Bodanis talks about the equation in the way he would talk about a person: first the history of ancestors (works in which all the knowledge that led Einstein to create the theory of relativity was obtained), then the circumstances of birth, the details of childhood, the time of maturity and the consequences of life - which Grand affairs grew out of a single equation.
This book is not only about how science affects the world and history. In the story of the biography E = mc² personal stories, dramas and intrigues are intertwined - science abounds with them just like any other part of life, but they are much less known about them than about divorces or weddings of stars. For example, about how the German scientist Otto Gan actually betrayed his partner, the Jewish woman Lisa Meitner, who was hiding from the Nazis. They investigated the decay of the nucleus, and although the contribution of Meitner was very significant, Gan published the results, without mentioning her name - and the Nobel Prize also received only him.
Paul de Cruy
"Microbe Hunters"
Another popular science book that uses artistic techniques. This is such a scientific detective story, in which investigative scientists are trying to calculate and catch suspects - bacteria and viruses. The author painstakingly talks about how epidemics mowed down cities, how scientists gradually understood who the invisible killer was and were looking for a way to neutralize it - the vaccination did not appear all of a sudden, they went to her long and hard, discarding non-working options. I would give this book to all schoolchildren and students to read, so that they not only understand that vaccinations are not a conspiracy of pharmaceutical companies, but at the same time imbued with that particular pioneering spirit, which, of course, is the beauty of science.
Stanislav Lem
"The amount of technology"
If any of the writers influenced my development and attitude, then this is Stanislav Lem. At home there was a complete work, dad often spoke quotes from him. Lem has an incredible erudition, an overwhelming intellect, this is such a classic geek, with a writer's talent. There are no standard templates in his books; he influenced not only fantastic literature, but also cinematographers: for example, the idea of the remarkable Nolan film “The Beginning” is Lem's a little less than full.
"The amount of technology" - a book about scientific thinking, about how you can, relying only on logic and building chains of reasoning, to understand complex things, including those that are usually not thought about. Например, объясняя, почему фантасты так плохо предсказывают будущее ("Капитан Джон Смит вышел на мостик сверхскоростного супер-мега-гиперзвёздного корабля и вставил в бортовой компьютер перфокарту с маршрутом"), Лем выводит целую систему фазовых переходов технологических достижений: невозможно предсказывать будущее, находясь на предыдущем технологическом и мировоззренческом этапе. "Сумма технологии" по объёму сравнима с "Архипелагом ГУЛАГ", но её обязательно нужно прочитать всем, кто хочет понять, что же такое научный подход и как с его помощью можно объяснять мир.But what Lem completely fails is love stories - but in his case, this is a small flaw.