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\markboth{\small \em\quad Boris Voronov\hfill }{\hfill \small \em Misha in Moscow University \quad }
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\title{MISHA IN MOSCOW UNIVERSITY$^{\,\dagger}$}

\footnotetext{$^\dagger$ Talk at the ITEP seminar devoted to memory of Michael Marinov, May 2000.}
\author{BORIS VORONOV}
\address{Lebedev Physical Institute, 119991 Moscow, Russia}
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%\noindent 
I do not speak for myself alone.  I represent a few of our close
personal friends. All of us would like to honor Misha's memory, but I am
personally indebted to Misha.

A brief vignette:  together with some old university friends I had the
opportunity to say
good-bye to Misha on his last evening before he left for Israel. I
was asked to make a short speech for all of us and I started by
saying: ``I am sorry, Misha, forgive us". Misha just laughed as he was in
excellent spirits.

In 1956 I was accepted to Moscow State University and the first person I met
at the Physics Department was Misha Marinov, who was then already carrying
himself like a king. The fact that Misha had been accepted to the University
that year was a stroke of blind luck. Before 1956 the upper limit of
people of the certain ethnic group [Jews] was set to be zero,
%Jewish nationality had
%been limited just above zero percent, 
but in 1956 a special delegation (I don't
know of whom it consisted) appealed to Nikita Sergeyevich [Khruschev] personally
to take away this quota. This was soon after the 20th Party Congress, which had an
enormous effect on all of us, and Nikita Sergeyevich personally ordered that the
quota for Jews in the University be eliminated. That was the first
and the last such year and many people that we know today began their
education then. Misha was accepted, of course, when his abilities were
judged objectively. 

I must say that it was thanks to Misha that I remained in the Physics Department. 
I came from the periphery Moscow and, except for some mathematics, I knew very
little. Immediately there was a question of me being expelled. Luckily, in class I
sat next to Misha and stubbornly asked him to explain everything to
me. There was never the slightest hint he ever became annoyed; on the contrary, 
he was always prepared to explain things to me thoroughly and clearly,
step by step. And so I stayed in the Physics Department. Dear Misha, thank you very much.

Misha always wanted to be a physicist. I know that as a high school student
he attended a physics group, where he was distinguished by his exceptional
abilities: he always solved all the problems first, while sitting at the
front of the class. 

At the University there existed an internal classification of students: the
most advanced students (most of them residents of Moscow) were called ``titans'' or
``giants'', followed by two additional categories which were less advanced. Misha was
from the first day unquestionably a giant and a titan.

Upon being admitted to the University he was immediately singled out for
his outstanding mathematical abilities. During the break Misha was
would walk alongside the professor down the corridor discussing certain geometrical
problems of which I couldn't even begin conceive. To me he was an ``Olympic God''
and I regarded him as such until we became closer. Then he wasn't an
``Olympic God'' any more and simply became Misha Marinov.

Everyone realized that he was a giant, but not only in the scientific
sphere. Our generation lived through some very turbulent times: we were the
children of the 20th Communist Party Congress, witnessing the events
in Berlin, Poland and Hungary. In seminars on the History of the Communist Party some
very heated discussions took place. Misha participated in these
discussions, but his remarks were usually very brief and critical. He
thoroughly studied the history of the communist party and tried to
formalize the history textbook, although, of course, it was impossible.

This is how Misha Marinov is described in the diary of one very smart and
mathematically educated (as you will see from her writing style) girl, who
knew him during her years at the University:
``Misha wasn't interested in girls, at least not in the ones from the
department, and even slightly despised them. However, saying that this was
mutual would be incorrect. Misha was very attractive with a kind of
biblical beauty, for which he received the nicknames of Mephistopheles,
Judas and, oddly enough, Trotsky. Women admired him, but were a bit afraid
of his cynical remarks, usually uttered in a soft purring voice and
accompanied by the famous ``integral'' smile." 

I considered Misha a close friend and often confided in him. One day he in
turn told me something about himself. Generally, he was a person with
a very
intense inner life that was rarely revealed
%, but he didn't reveal it very often.  
The circumstances revealed to me that day that, in my opinion, that changed him
as a man and as a person forever. On his first day back to
elementary school after having been away for a long time he was severely beaten by his
classmates. He wanted to know ``why'', ``what for'' and the indifferent answer
followed: ``Don't you know? We are beating the Jews\,!\,'' This remark changed
him forever and from that moment an intense change took place inside
him. It seems that at that moment he had already decided to dedicate his life to a single
cause. When asked about the purpose of Misha's life, I would say that his
chosen purpose was to serve Israel, the Promised land of his Forefathers, according
to his own words.

The decision that he made that day at school was always with him and he
never changed. The amazing thing is he decided to dedicate himself to
a certain purpose and from then on all his efforts were aimed at perfecting
himself and preparing himself, making himself maximally effective in
achieving his goal. He did everything in earnest, always strived for
perfection and it was known to all that if Misha was doing something, he was
doing it very well, and if he knew something, he knew its very essence.

The last letter I received from him was in June, when he was already ill. I had
heard about it and wrote a letter to say that we were all with him and
thinking about him. It was then that he mentioned the possible source of
his illness. In 1957 we all went to work the Tselina in Kazakhstan. There
Misha also performed remarkably. At night we would witness certain
amazing ``natural phenomena'', similar to the aurora borealis: the black sky
over the step would be lit up by flashes of fantastic beauty. We admired it
and didn't realize what it was. As it turned out later, these were the
after-results of the latest nuclear experiments, which were carried out in
Semipalatinsk area, in the atmosphere.  We, of course, weren't warned about
this. After these events the area was suddenly swept by a kind of
hurricane, accompanied by a downpour of an exceptional strength, such that
the locals deemed very unusual, almost unreal. It is possible that some of
us suffered, as a consequence, as Misha certainly did. Misha, like many others,
used to sleep outside on the haystacks, because the air indoors was
impossibly stale. Other young men and women used to cover their heads and
faces for the night, but Misha was proud of his ``mane'' and never covered
his head in the summer. Misha got absolutely soaked during that hurricane and
he thought that it was then that he contracted this disease, which
remained inside him till it awoke in his last years. That year, in
September of 1957, he lost a great amount of hair, which could have been a sign of being
exposed to radiation.

Misha and I often met during the following years, working together, going
to seminars and discussing many issues. I think that we always regarded
each other with mutual sympathy. As for myself, I simply loved Misha. 

Speaking of Misha as a person, I want to emphasize one of his main
features, recognized by many others as well; he was a very self-contained
person. His own internal judgment was always the ultimate and the deciding
factor for him. He was very independent in his views and didn't recognize
any authority. At a relatively early age he already voiced such opinions
about such ``great figures'' that I shuddered. He had what you might
call a certain  ``self-reliance''.
  
Misha Marinov was a very wholesome, complete person. Such he was, such he
remains in my memory and I hope, will remain always.

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\noindent
{\em Translated from Russian by Maria Marinov}

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