SOME STEPS IN THE PAST: AN ATTEMPT AT AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
by Mikhail Yeselson
5. MY WORK.
So I should be a journalist, too; this career was open to me. Nevertheless, I saw their life too closely, saw how much it was filled with falsehoods and impossibilities to tell the truth; saw their power, weakness and fear of the future; saw their desperate attempts to express their real opinions and the awful dread of paying for their courage.
Because of that, I became a physicist. At that time, the echo of the nuclear bomb's explosion had not subsided, and this occupation was very fashionable. Physics attracted me with its infinity and variety of opportunities.
I was in luck. After two years of studying physics, I started working at my first lab, and, as it turned out shortly, I was a real man of labs. I wanted to be at the lab all my life.
Skip over the details. Like each Soviet Jew who wanted to make a career, I had to work much more than the others. It's usual to consider that research work brings satisfaction by itself, and, in general, it does. Surely, a big success is always the goal, but it comes so rarely, and, in any case, everyday work was never boring to me. I wrote some books, about a hundred science articles, and interminable numbers of reports, which pretty well spoiled my former style of writing. Somehow, it returned to me in another country, in another language -- when all scientific exercises were left far behind my back.
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Mikhail Yeselson, 1996