Word: physicist
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...Russian woodsman. Then, in a voice strained from singing When the Saints Go Marching In to Soviets and Americans gathered at the Chautauqua Institution, he discussed the dangers of nuclear weapons and the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or Star Wars. Finally, the trim, 5-ft. 8-in. physicist, who rarely drinks and never smokes, concluded with his vision for a joint U.S.-U.S.S.R. mission to Mars. The performance was vintage Sagdeyev: a mixture of wit, charm and trenchant observation...
Born in Moscow, Sagdeyev, 54, once planned to become a mathematician, like both of his parents. But as a student at Moscow University in the mid-1950s, he switched majors to study physics. "A physicist can still enjoy the beauty of mathematics and have a more intimate interaction with nature," he says. Sagdeyev also took up English, which he calls the "first necessity for a scientist." He passed along his appreciation of the language to his son and daughter, both computer scientists, and to his two small grandchildren...
...that would limit man-made damage to the atmosphere's protective ozone layer. As they deliberated, the British journal Nature published a study offering the strongest evidence so far that man-made compounds called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are the culprits. Crofton Farmer, principal author of the study and an atmospheric physicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., reported that data gathered last year in the Antarctic are "entirely consistent" with the premise that CFCs -- used in refrigeration devices and as ingredients in plastic foams -- are destroying the ozone. "The evidence isn't final," he told TIME last week...
...conflict with a longing to chuck it all and live in rural, childlike innocence. Longing wins, and Darke moves to a Suffolk woods where he dons short pants, carries a slingshot and spends his days in a tree house atop a 160-foot beech. He is quite mad. His physicist wife explains the split between his secret existence and his official report: "It was his fantasy life that drew him to the work, and it was his desire to please the boss that made him write...
...getting superconductors from the laboratory to the marketplace will be no easy task. "What worries me is that people may come to think that they're going to buy superconducting circular saws at Sears next year," says Don Capone, a physicist at Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago. Concurs Nobel Laureate Robert Schrieffer, who shared the 1972 prize for developing a theory of how superconductors work: "It's time for everyone to catch their breath and try to understand what Mother Nature has presented...