Boy, have things gotten busy!

So now it is June 28, and we leave Russia in just two days (in fact, two days from now we will be over the north Atlantic headed for Greenland). The week has been eventful, to say the least.

After our arrival back from Tomsk, we all needed a long rest: a four-hour time differential in both directions does absolutely nothing favorable for the internal clock! I am actually still feeling jet-lagged. So Saturday, we did little but sleep until we left the hotel to go to the Federations Cup match between Russia and Mexico. Anna had gotten us amazing seats, just twelve rows back from the field! The match itself was an excellent one, with a referee who did not pay frees to players who took a dive. It ended up Mexico 2-Russia 1, and to be honest, a draw would have been a fairer outcome. Of course, the locals were dejected about the final score, but they are now beginning to look at the way their team played, and they are now seeing a lot of good things there for the future.

 The view of the pitch from our seats; magnificent!

 Almost the same picture

 The mascot for the Confederations Cup

On our way back to the hotel, we met a young woman named Elena, who is a teacher in one of the special English schools here in Kazan. When none of us obviously had any idea of where to get off the bus, she accompanied us all the way back to our hotel. Her English was excellent, and being a teacher herself, she shared interests with Sergei. Of course, he probed for every bit of information he could get about the Russian educational system. I do not envy Jill Prushiek the job of reading the dissertation he is going to produce!

Sunday was another lazy day, but given the amount of work we had gotten done, I did not feel bad about taking the weekend off. I also needed some time just to gather my wits for the Conference, which began the next day. The opening ceremony was held in the Imperial Hall of the University, and Academician Konovalov again decided that I should get a shout-out. The book containing the Russian translations of my papers in English has now gone into a second printing, and everyone who has not already received a copy has gotten a new one. I will be bringing some back with me for colleagues out east and west, who have asked for them.

The Monday morning session went long—very long—so lunch was not the leisurely affair I thought it might be. The afternoon sessions were in the Shalyapin Palace Hotel, and I had lunch there with the Polish group. The afternoon sessions went much better because the chairs of those sessions did not allow the speakers to go over. The afternoon sessions were capped by the welcoming social with serious finger food and excellent wine (the red was from southeastern Australia, of course!). Monday night was another crash and sleep night.

Yesterday, Anna presented her poster.

 Anna at her poster.

 Anna at her poster from the other side.

 Anna and your humble blogger at her poster.

 Anna and booted mentor at her poster.

Anna presenting her poster to a Russian post-doc.

I spent the morning locked in conference with Dr. Valery Shtyrlin, and I think we now have hammered out the logistics for a book on the development of Butlerov's structural theory, and I think we are going to approach Springer as publisher. We now have notes from his lectures in 1859-1860 (taken by Markovnikov) and 1862-1863 (taken by Bukhvostov). These lecture notes provide us with direct insight into a really critical time in the development of organic chemistry.

June 22

So here it is, the evening of June 22. Much has happened in the last few days.

Our trip from Kazan to Tomsk on June 20 was eventful, indeed. The first leg, back to Moscow, was not especially memorable. The second leg, from Moscow to Tomsk was. For three hours, I was seated directly behind a screaming 2-year-old who was clearly having a tantrum, and who had equally obviously been spoiled rotten. So the thought that I might get some sleep between midnight and 4 am went right out the window. By the time we landed I was ready to kill his parents, neither of whom seemed to have a clue, or to give a damn about the people around them. The mother could have taken the kid back to the bathroom and stayed there until he stopped. But she didn't.

We arrived at Tomsk on time, at 7:15 am on June 21, and I decided that with my boot—yes, it's still on—discretion would be the better part of valor, and I rode a wheelchair back to the terminal. Once again, I was piled into the back of a food delivery truck and driven to the terminal. This time, I was the last to get off. Oh well...

We were met at the gate by Professor Mekhman Yusubov, Head of the Department of Technology of Organic Substances and Polymer Materials. Obviously, he had been in a similar situation with other travelers, because he brought us straight to our hotel and told us to rest until after lunch. None of us needed a second invitation. I crashed for about 3 hours. Despite the heat and lack of air-conditioning, I was out for the count. Fortunately, I have now figured out how to use the alarm on my iPhone, and have found a genuinely annoying ring tone for it.

After our naps, Professor Yusubov met us and took us to lunch at a restaurant owned by a friend of his. The restaurant was "Буланже", which is a Russian transliteration of the French, "Boulanger." The food was excellent. After lunch, we piled into his car and a cab, and we took off for TPU (Tomsk Polytechnic University). There we visited the museum of the History of TPU, and they had some truly fascinating photographs that I had never seen. Of course, I begged copies and left my business card to get them. I was also presented with a gift of local pine-nut candy and jams. The jam will definitely survive to Eau Claire, but there may be a question about the candy. After the visit to the Museum, we went to Professor Yusubov's office for coffee and tea in the Russian style. Anna and I had "Tomsk" coffee, one of Professor Yusubov's specialties. The walk from the University Museum to Professor Yusubov's office took place in a refreshing shower of cooling rain.

After another rest for me, and a walking tour of Tomsk for the students, with a Ph.D. student named Viktor, we had supper at another of the restaurants in the same chain—this time "Буланжери," or "Boulangerie." However he did it, the owner appears to have cornered the market on really good cooks. We got back to the hotel around 10:00, so I was an hour late for my Skype call with my students. I did get to talk with Fatou and Chris, but the rest had taken off. I have to Skype two others tonight. After that, I found that I had lost access to my wifi, and my Russian phone was out of minutes because I didn't know how to turn it off, so it roamed all night long, also. I will have to reload it once we are back in Kazan.

iPhone expert that I have become, I set the alarm for 3:00 am Kazan time, so that I would get the wake-up call at 7:00 am Tomsk time. Of course, the phone follows you into your new time zone, so instead of 8 hours of beautiful sleep, I got 4. Then I tried falling back to sleep, and somewhat succeeded. Oddly enough, despite the heat of the day, my feet were cold!

That brings us to today: June 22. This has been another monumental day of highs for me. After breakfast, Professor Yusubov met us and took us back to his office, where we again had tea and coffee in the Russian style (with cookies and cakes and candy). This time we had simple, strong coffee. After tea, I was interviewed by a reporter from the University newspaper (similar to the View at UW-Eau Claire) about Professor Nikolai Matveevich Kizhner, the man who was the main reason that we came to Tomsk. He has two reactions named for him: the Wolff-Kishner reduction, and the Kishner cyclopropane synthesis. I was surprised at how little the locals (except for those who had read my Angewandte Chemie biography) knew about this important organic chemist. The interview took about 40 minutes rather than the 30 or so they had allotted, and then we went outside for some photographs—lots of photographs. Fortunately, I was already pumped, so the smile came easily.

Then we went across the street to the old building where Kizhner had had his laboratory and lecture hall. One thing you should know about Kizhner, dear Reader, is that before he discovered his two name reactions, he had lost both feet above the ankles, and was confined to a wheelchair. And despite that, he continued to do teaching and research in an era when a disability was almost always fatal to one's career. For sheer persistence and courage, I know of few individuals who could rival Kizhner.

After the interview was completed, we went upstairs to where the auditorium where Kizhner taught. I have a photograph of him teaching a lecture on osazones in the same room, so I drew a structure (incorrect!!?) on the chalkboard. But I have now stood where the great man stood. We also visited the part of the Kizhner library that has been preserved in the building (on his medical trips to Berlin, Kizhner would buy books and journals, so that Tomsk had one of the best chemistry libraries in Russia). After lunch, the students went one way, and I went with Professor Yusubov on a tour of the old part of the city of Tomsk. I did not know that the city was just over 100 years old—just over 900 years younger than Kazan! With some of the sharp turns and having to stop fast on more than one occasion (the drivers are nuts!), my back re-emerged as a problem. Sleep was hard, but I got as much as I could.

June 23

Today was travel and touring. We left Tomsk at 10:10 am local time (6:00 am Kazan time), and got into Moscow at 10:20 am Moscow time after a 4 hour flight. We left our baggage bags in a secure deposit, and headed into the city on the Aeroexpress train. Switching to the Moscow Metro (it reminds me very much of the M in Washington, D.C.), we went three stops and got off at the Teatralnyi station (near the Bolshoi Theater) and walked to Red Square. From all the things I have seen, I was expecting something about the size of 3 football fields. Man, what an under-estimate!!! The place is huge! It has to be at least 300 yards across, and at least 900 yards long. I now see how they got all those military parades in there with room to spare. I could see over ten or twenty thousand people without any effort. At the far end of the square is the most famous image of Russia: St. Basil's Cathedral. We got our group photographs taken by a tourist for whom we reciprocated the favor.

As we entered the square through the gate, the Kremlin walls were on the right, as was Lenin's tomb. This Kremlin is much younger, and much, much more intimidating than the Kazan Kremlin. We had no time, so we had to admire the Kremlin from the outside. The left side of the square is dominated by the GUM shopping mall, which is full of places that I cannot afford to shop at. It's OK, though...  We ducked into GUM while it decided to rain; the temperature was a chilly 50°F or so, with a biting wind. When I got goosebumps, I decided that enough was enough. After warming up (and then some), we went and got our group shots in front of St. Basil.

Our three hours in Moscow went by way too quickly, but I was paranoid about getting ourselves back in time for our flight to Kazan. When we got back here, we found the same Gypsy taxi guy whom we had used when we first arrived. It worked well.

I am going to download a bunch of pictures tomorrow morning, and will post a mainly photographic post. Right now, I am weary to the bone (or further).

More tomorrow...

Your Humble Blogger

Student blogs

Here are the URLs for two of my students' blogs:

Carlydoesthings.wordpress.com

http://sciencewithsergei.blogspot.ru/

June 19—What a day!

Yesterday, we visited the fortress of Ivan IV ("the Terrible") at the confluence of the Volga and Sviyaga Rivers. Our guide was a woman who had lived at Sviyazhsk as a child during the Soviet era, and who had also taught high school English there during and after the Soviet era. She had a number of fascinating insights that you seldom get from the standard tour guides. Of course, my sieve-like memory did not retain nearly enough to give you any real idea of all the really good stuff she gave us. One important thing we found is that the fortress itself was not completely destroyed during the Soviet era, but was used as a Gulag for political prisoners, and as a mental hospital. Three cathedrals were destroyed by the Soviets, who blew them up. Oddly enough, the third was destroyed less than an hour before the telegram arrived from Moscow telling the local Soviet to save them as examples of Russian national architecture. I did take some pictures; I have loaded the first batch here (the download from my iPhone is very slow, and 24 photos right now is apparently beyond its capabilities):

 The Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The top is being restored to its pre-soviet appearance. There is a lot of restoration going on at Sviyazhsk. Dylan and Sergei are in the foreground.

 Basically the same view, with Dylan and Sergei again in the foreground.

The  bell tower of the cathedral of the Assumption. Our guide is in front of Dylan.

Same bell tower, same guide.

It's now a couple of hours later, Germany has defeated (but not humiliated) Australia 3-2, and now the rest of the photos from yesterday have loaded, so here they are:

The monastery where the Blessed Germon was Abbott. There are numerous miracles attributed to him, and he became a powerful churchman—the only one who would say "no" to Tsar Ivan—and a Russian orthodox Saint.

Another view of the monastery, which was a school and a hospital during the Soviet era.

 Another view of the monastery.

 And another

 The Bell tower of the cathedral of the Assumption, looking along the lower raised sidewalk

 Again

The grotto where St. Christopher is said to have been. Photoshop has revealed details not easily visible in the original photograph.

 Same grotto, with flash, but no photoshop

 Walking towards the cathedral of the Mother of God, Joy of all Sorrows. The students are in front of me.

 Same walk, but now showing the lands of the Nunnery within their wall. Our guide is to the right of Carly and Anna here.

 Further along the same walk. All four students and our guide are in the foreground.

 On the bench inside the Church of the Holy Trinity. Ivan built this wooden church outside Moscow, and like the rest of the fortress it was disassembled, the logs were coded, and floated down the Volga to Sviyazhsk. Reassembling the church was the work of just one week. The last time I was in Sviyazhsk, we could take photographs inside the sanctuary because this was not a functioning church.  Apparently that has changed, because the girls had to wear shawls and skirts, and no photographs were allowed. We do make a handsome group!

 Again

Again

 Again

 Again (our guide wanted to make sure she got a good one)...

 In front of the 16th-century door to the church The lighting has made this photograph pretty creepy—look at the girls' eyes! Note also, how low the door is. This was deliberate, so that all people entering the church would have to bow towards the altar and the Sanctuary as they entered.

 Looking at the next church from the verandah of the Cathedral of the Trinity. I forget what this one was—sorry! I think it is also associated with the nuns, but I won't put money on it,

Same view, almost

And now, June 19.

Today I returned to Val ery Shtyrlin's office with my students, and we once again had tea. After tea, Valery released the students, and he and I went to the library for some extremely serious research. One of the big questions about the period 1858-1864 is, exactly when did Butlerov begin to formulate his version of the Theory of Chemical Structure.

On Friday, we looked at the notes from his lecture course of 1859-1860, and in these notes he allows for the possibility that the atomic weights may be C=12, O=16, and S=32, but he dismisses them in favor of Kolbe's equivalent weights, C=6, O=8, and S=16. Using these values, the formulas of molecules must have doubled atoms of carbon, oxygen and sulfur. The monovalent elements, on the other hand, did not have this restriction. Using the more modern values, the doubled atoms could be done away with, and this, I believe, provides a real window into how he developed his structural theory—without the nuisance of the doubled atoms, he could move forward.

As I said, in Markovnikov's notes, Butlerov used the values C=6 and O=8 throughout the entire year, although towards the end of that academic year he appeared to be softening his stance towards the modern values. In 1861, he published a paper in the Zeitschrift für Chemie und Pharmacie based on his talk at the Meeting of Naturalists and Physicians in Speyer, Germany. In this paper, he uses the "barred" symbols for the elements, along with the modern values for the atomic weights: C=12 and O=16. This put him in the minority at the time, although that minority grew with time, just as the majority view faded. In the notes taken by his student, Ivan Bukhvostov, the year begins the same way, but now the Kolbe equivalent weights being rapidly discarded after a brief demonstration of the superiority of the atomic weights. By 1862, Butlerov was teaching from a much more mature theory of organic structure, much closer to its form in his Vvedenie k polnomu izucheniyu organicheskoi khimii (Introduction to the complete study of organic chemistry). There is now a huge amount of translating to do! What a joy!

The fact that I have spent so much time discussing this does convey, I hope, the real sense of excitement I have based on these two manuscripts. Here is the answer to one of the critical questions about the rise of structural theory, and Butlerov's pivotal role in it.

I am not sure what I am going to do for supper tonight. I have a new loaf of Borodinskii bread (good black Russian bread that fills you up), and some cherry jam, as well as a large bottle (5 liters!) of water. Still, I probably ought to get some protein in me, I suppose.

More tomorrow after watching a disappointing match between Germany and Australia. Still, 2-3 isn't bad against the reigning World Champions...

The rest of the pictures from the other day

I have been promising these pictures for several days, now, so it is probably time to make good on the promise. Let's see how quickly this goes...

Dylan and Sergei at the Rubai, an Uzbekh restaurant just down the street. Dylan and I have eaten there twice now, and last night I had a Tatar rabit dish that was absolutely superb!

 Here we are with our hands on the belly of the Kazan Cat (Kazan Kot). Rubbing his belly brings good luck, so we had to...

Four students near the canal that runs through the center of the city. The Kremlin is in the background.

The next views are of the Kremlin from down the hill and across the road. It gives some idea of the size of the citadel itself, although it does not show just how daunting an attack from this direction would be.

June 17

A lazy day today. I slept in until 8:00 (wonderful!), then had breakfast with Dylan and Sergei as usual. I went back down to the mall to check out the bookstore, and came back with more books—this time Russian translations of The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas (which I have read in the French, thanks to daughter Veronica, as well as in English translation), Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott, which is basically the Robin Hood story, and A Study in Scarlet, by Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, in which he introduced Sherlock Holmes to the world. Because I have read all these books in their native languages, I expect that it will make reading them in Russian a little easier. What is weird is that I find I can read quite a bit without a dictionary!

As I have been promising over and over, here are some more photographs from Russia, with love:

From June 15:

 The cauldron in the center of this picture has great significance in the history of the city, so this building, which is based on the cauldron, is an especially popular place for weddings (it is said to possess good luck).

 Same cauldron, almost the same view

This building, we  found out, is the Ministry of Agriculture for the Republic of Tatarstan. If you check out the main gates in the central archway, you will see that it is in the form of a tree in winter (i.e., no leaves).

 A slightly closer view of the Ministry of Agriculture building

 This monastery is under the control of the Metropolitan of Moscow, not Kazan. We did not go into it, but from the outside it is quite attractive.

And from June 16:

The Lewis students in the Butlerov Museum of the Kazan School of Chemistry. The lit sign behind them carries the images of the major Kazan chemists and their academic progeny. Practically every major university in the Russian Empire by the turn of the twentieth century is represented by these portraits. This image has been photoshopped to lighten it up, because the original was way too dark to se.e anything

  Same four students, same sign. Photoshopped, also.

 The entire group in front of the sign. Note how Sergei is doing his best stoic Russian imitation. A better picture in terms of brightness. No photoshopping needed here.

And again, without photoshopping. Notice how nobody has moved! You can only tell that these are different because of Dylan's smile and my mouth being more open (and yes, I know it's hard to find a time when it is closed!).

Here is a little something from today—a translation of a small part of the Markovnikov lecture notes where the atomic weights used for carbon and oxygen are being discussed. What is interesting is that here Butlerov describes the old system of weights (C=6, O=8) and the new (C=12, O=16), and opts for the old system. Two years later, he would be using the new (modern) values.

My rough first translation is:

Having adopted the law of four volumes, we find that all the complex groups that had been considered to incorporate 1 atom of C or O do not satisfy it. However, the 2-volume law does answer it, and for strict implementation of this [4-volume] law it remains just to double these formulas. This doubling is confirmed by many other analogies. If we adopt it, we find that the smallest the amount of carbon and oxygen in the compound occur if C = 12and  O = 16; if we take C = 6, O = 8, we will have a law that C and O enter into the composition of complex bodies differently—as pairs of atoms; S and Se are analogous to O. For water and carbon monoxide, therefore, the formulas are H₂O, CO or H₂O₂, C₂O₂­. We will use these last formulas, and consider C = 6, О = 8. Further, adopting the four-volume formula for all bodies, we find that H, Cl, Br, N, and metals also follow the law of parity with only this difference: these elements are mutually complementary (that is, each pair can consist of one atom of hydrogen and chlorine or one hydrogen and a metal, etc.), whereas carbon, oxygen and its analogs must enter the compound in an even number of atoms.

I must say that this copyist has the most beautiful handwriting, which makes the translation a much easier job!

June 16: One week done

So here we are at Friday again, one full week into our trip. Today, we got an in-depth tour of the Butlerov Museum of the Kazan Chemical School, and the students were all avid photographers as we collected a full slate of images from the Museum. After lunch, we headed to Bauman Street (the main pedestrian mall in Kazan, absolutely chock-full of souvenir shops) to get our FAN IDs for the World Cup match next weekend. Russia vs. Mexico starts at 6:00 p.m., and from the lines today, our original plan to get them next Saturday morning would have taken hours and hours—in fact, we may not have gotten them at all! And no FAN ID, no entry into the game, even with a ticket.

This first week was shortened by two days as we got settled into Kazan; the University was busy Tuesday with meetings, etc., pushed back a day by the public holiday. Even so, one of the major goals of the trip has been realized by us getting the copy of Markovnikov's notes from Butlerov's 1859-1860 lectures. I have taken a cursory examination of it, and it is even more valuable than I had thought. We have a substantial amount of work ahead of us—but FUN work.

Today's photographs will provide images for a book on the Kazan School of Chemistry that we will start writing on our return to Eau Claire. The chemistry done here was so pivotal in a number of areas that it deserves to be much better known in the west. I hope we can contribute to the education of our peers.

After our stay at the FAN ID center, which was really like a DMV office in the U.S, even down to the ticket with your number on it, we went to the Tatarstan Hotel yo get tickets for the Sunday excursion (guided tour) to Sviyazhsk, Ivan the Terrible's fortress at the confluence of the Volga and Sviyaga Rivers. For what it is worth, when you are Tsar of all the Russias, you can complete your Confluence Project in 24 hours by floating the logs from a full-size model of the fortress down the river. I doubt that we will see the same kind of progress in EC, but then it is a democracy, not an autocracy.

It's bedtime now, so I will post more photographs tomorrow.