Eliashberg 80
One of the reasons to visit Russia was the fact that my supervisor, Gerasim Matveevitch (Sima) Eliashberg has turned 80 years old this year. Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics has organized a three-day conference to honour him and Vsevolod Gantmacher (75), and I was invited. Teun Klapwijk also got there, to commemorate the fact that one of his first experiments was to confirm an effect predicted by Eliashberg. Wonder if Teun could fully enjoy the talks: it appeared unexpectedly that the working language of the conference is Russian…
Prof. Eliashberg is still active and kicking. He attended all the talks. Once upon time, he has provided a great support to BCS theory of superconductivity by extending their approach to more realistic “strong coupling” case. He has also pioneered the use of random matrices in condensed matter physics, among other things. I greatly appreciate him teaching me. The point is that in my diploma thesis-PhD times I was rather unconventional younster. If I had a teacher of lesser patience and readiness to listen to baby-talk, I would never ever become a physicist. Well, by that time I thought that having such a supervisor is quite usual. Since that I met thousands of physisists, quick and deep, bright and active, but till now I haven’t met anybody who was as kind and noble as Eliashberg.
Long live Eliashberg.
