Substantia. An International Journal of the History of Chemistry 6(1): 145-147, 2022 Firenze University Press www.fupress.com/substantia ISSN 2532-3997 (online) | DOI: 10.36253/Substantia-1498 Obituary Professor Alexander Kessenikh (1932-2021) Andrey V. Andreev1, Vadim A. Atsarkin2, Konstantin V. Ivanov1, Gennady E. Kurtik1, Pierandrea Lo Nos- tro3, Vasily V. Ptushenko4,5, Konstantin A. Tomilin1, Natalia V. Vdovichenko1, Vladimir P. Vizgin1 1 Vavilov Institute for the History of Science and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia 2 Kotel’nikov Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia 3 Department of Chemistry “Ugo Schiff ”, University of Florence, Italy; 4 Belozersky Institute of Physico-Chemical Biology of the Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia 5 Emanuel Institute of Biochemical Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia On September 15, 2021, professor Alexander V. Kes- senikh had passed away. He was known for his works on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and history of sci- ence (Figure 1). Alexander V. Kessenikh was born on February 13, 1932 in Tomsk, a scientific capital of Siberia at that time, where his parents-physicists worked. Due to the work on military subjects of his father, Vladimir N. Kess- enikh, the family moved to Moscow Region in 1943. In 1949-1953, Alexander Kessenikh studied at the Faculty of Physics of the Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU). It was a momentous time for both Soviet phys- ics and Soviet student community, and Alexander Kes- senikh took an active part in the events of that moment. In late 1940s-early 1950s, science in the USSR has been subjected to the strongest ideological press or even (in some scientific fields) to almost complete destruction. In physics, the relativity theory and quantum mechanics were declared “idealistic and hostile” branches of scienc- es. Fortunately, the burning need of the USSR for atomic weapons prevented the defeat of physics, but in MSU and many other universities of the country, modern physics education was practically destroyed. In the MSU Faculty of Physics, students rebelled with the demand to return them to a full-fledged physics education, although this was an unprecedented and threatened danger for the initiators. This resulted in a revolution in physics education at MSU (and hence in other universities) and in students’ self-awareness bringing a breath of freedom to the student community. Alexander Kessenikh was one of the organizers of that revolution[1]. Another manifestation of freedom in the student community was the flourishing of student amateur art. In this area, Alexander Kessenikh was also one of the most popular student leaders due to his poetic talent (later, he authored several published books of poetry, e.g.[2]) that he applied not only to writing poetry: togeth- er with his like-minded friends, he wrote several humor- ous operas on the themes of student life and created a student festival, Archimedes Day. One of the first Archi- medes Days was visited by Niels Bohr, who was delight- ed and said that if students were capable of the same Figure 1. Alexander V. Kessenikh (1932-2021). Source: Personal archive of A.V. Kessenikh. http://www.fupress.com/substantia 146 Andrey V. Andreev et al. ingenuity and wit in physics, he would feel secure about the future of physics. The Physics Faculty operas and Archimedes Days became a model for students and cata- lyzed the emergence of similar student festivals across the country, and not only among physicists[3,4] (Figure 2). From his first steps in science, Alexander Kessenikh linked his scientific fate with the recently discovered NMR. His research interests included dynamically and chemically induced polarization of nuclear spins, dou- ble nuclear-nuclear resonances, paramagnetic relaxation mechanisms, and structural and chemical applications of nuclear magnetic resonance. Among his most cited works are works on the dynamic polarization of pro- tons[5]. In this area, Alexander Kessenikh made an out- standing scientific discovery: a new (three-spin) mecha- nism of dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) in solids was proposed theoretically and confirmed experimental- ly[5-7]. This mechanism (named “cross effect”) is current- ly recognized as one of the main DNP methods and is successfully used in nuclear physics, NMR tomography, and other fields[8]. The priority of the Kessenikh group in this discovery is now generally recognized. Since the late 1990s, Alexander Kessenikh started his research in the history of physics. He made a tru- ly huge contribution to the creation of the history of research in the field of NMR in the USSR. In fact, his works constitute an encyclopedia of this history. He desired also to compose a database of literature in the field of magnetic resonance. Fortunately, he managed to publish the results of this work[9,10]. Studying the inter- action of physics and chemistry in the history of NMR research allowed him to contribute to the analysis of interdisciplinarity in physics research. He also studied the social history of Soviet science focusing on the Gold- en Age of the Soviet science (mid-1950s-1960s) which had previously been poorly studied. The other focus was on scientific schools in physics, and his research gave a fruitful example of considering the Soviet physics his- tory as the history of formation and development of sci- entific schools in physics. Along with his own scientific research in the field, he did a lot of editorial work[11-14]. Unfortunately, most of his research on history of science remained published only in Russian (e.g., in [11-14] and other collections of articles). Despite his poor health, he did not stop working until the very last days. Thus, in recent years, he devel- oped a fruitful cooperation with the journal Substantia, for which he wrote two articles[15,16]. Alexander Kess- enikh did not live a few months to be 90. REFERENCES 1. Gaponov Yu.V., Kovaleva S.K., Kessenikh A.V. Stu- dent protests in 1953 at the Physics Faculty of Mos- cow State University as a social echo of the Atom- ic weapon project (in Russian) // The history of the Soviet Atomic project: documents, memoirs, research. Vol. 2. Ed. V.P. Vizgin. Comp. V.P. Vizgin and I.S. Drovenikov. — St. Petersburg: Publishing House of the Russian Academy of Sciences. 2002. pp. 519 - 544. 2. Kessenikh A.V. Dibs on for all and for myself ! (in Russian: Chur za vsekh i za sebia). Verses of vari- ous years and excerpts from the poems. — Moscow: Print-express, 1998. 3. Kessenikh A.V. Operas of the Physics Faculty (in Russian) / Soviet physicist, 2013, №6(103). h t t p s : / / w w w. p hy s . m s u . r u / r u s / a b o u t / s o v p hy s / ISSUES-2013/06(103)-2013/19658/ 4. Gaponov Yu.V. Traditions of “art of the physicists” in the Russian scientific physical community of the 1950s -1990s (in Russian) / Studies in the history of science and technology, 2003, №12. http://vivovoco. ibmh.msk.su/VV/JOURNAL/VIET/PHYSLIT.HTM 5. Kessenikh A.V., Lushchikov V.I., Manenkov A.A., Taran Y.V. Proton polarization in irradiated polyeth- ylenes / Soviet Physics — Solid State, 1963, Vol.5, №2, pp. 321-329. 6. Kessenikh A.V., Manenkov A.A. Dynamic polariza- tion of nuclei during saturation of nonuniformly broadened electron paramagnetic resonance lines / Soviet Physics — Solid State, 1963, Vol.5, №4, pp. 835-837. Figure 2. Alexander Kessenikh among the other authors of the first Physics Faculty opera and the Archimedes Day festival. Left to right: Yu. Gaponov, S. Soluyan, A.V. Kessenikh, V. Pismenny, Yu. Dnestrovsky. Around 1980. Source: Personal archive of A.V. Kess- enikh. 147Professor Alexander Kessenikh (1932-2021) 7. Kessenikh A.V., Manenkov A.A., Pyatnitskii G.I. On explanation of experimental data on dynamic polari- zation of protons in irradiated polyethylenes / Soviet Physics — Solid State, 1964, Vol.6, №3, pp. 641-643. 8. Wenckebach W.T. Essentials of Dynamic Nuclear Polarization. — The Netherlands: Spindrift Publica- tions, 2016. 9. Kessenikh A.V. On the historiography and bibliogra- phy of magnetic resonance (in Russian) // Historical studies in physics and mechanics 2005. — Moscow: Nauka, 2005. Pp. 217-291. 10. Kessenikh A.V., Ptushenko V.V. Magnetic resonance in the interior of the century: biographies and publi- cations. — Moscow: Fizmatlit, 2019. www.rfbr.ru/rffi/ ru/books/o_2092940. 11. Soviet physicists scientific community. 1950-1960s and other years. Issue 1 (in Russian) / Kessenikh A.V., Vizgin V.P. (Eds. and comp.). — Saint Peters- burg.: Russian Christian Humanitarian Academy Publishing, 2005. 12. Soviet physicists scientific community. 1950-1960s and other years. Issue 2 (in Russian) / Vizgin V.P., Kessenikh A.V. (Eds. and comp.). — Saint Peters- burg.: Russian Christian Humanitarian Academy Publishing, 2007. 13. To study the phenomenon of Soviet physics. 1950– 1960s years. Socio-cultural and interdisciplinary aspects (in Russian) // Vizgin V.P., Kessenikh A.V., Tomilin K.A. (Eds. and comp.) — Saint Petersburg: Russian Christian Humanitarian Academy Publish- ing, 2014. 14. Historical studies in physics and mechanics. 2014- 2015 (in Russian) // Vizgin V.P., Vdovichenko N.V., Tomilin K.A., Kessenikh A.V. (Eds. and comp.) — Moscow: Yanus-K, 2016. 15. Kessenikh A. Estonian scientist in USSR (Memories and reflections about Endel Lippmaa, 1930-2015) / Substantia, 2020, Vol.4, №2; https://doi.org/10.13128/ Substantia-851. 16. Kessenikh A. Spin Temperature and Dynamic Nucle- ar Polarization. From the History of Researches (1953 – 1983) / Substantia, 2021 Vol.5, №2, 19 - 34. https://doi.org/10.36253/Substantia-1224. Substantia An International Journal of the History of Chemistry Vol. 6, n. 1 - 2022 Firenze University Press To Print or not to Print? Preprints and publication: how the Covid-19 pandemic affected the quality of scientific production Pierandrea Lo Nostro Faraday’s Dogma Stephen T. Hyde Creativity in the Art, Literature, Music, Science, and Inventions Singlet Dioxygen 1O2, its Generation, Physico-chemical Properties and its Possible Hormetic Behavior in Cancer Therapy Marc Henry1, Miro Radman2, Luc Benichou3, Khalid O. Alfarouk4, Laurent Schwartz5,* Is the Second Law of Thermodynamics Able to Classify Drugs? Laurent Schwartz1,*, Luc Benichou2, Jules Schwartz1, Maxime Pontié3, Marc Henry4 History of Research on Phospholipid Metabolism and Applications to the Detection, Diagnosis, and Treatment of Cancer Peter F. Daly1, Jack S. Cohen2,* Capillary Electrophoresis (CE) and its Basic Principles in Historical Retrospect. Part 3. 1840s –1900ca. The First CE of Ions in 1861. Transference Numbers, Migration Velocity, Conductivity, Mobility Ernst Kenndler The Early History of Polyaniline II: Elucidation of Structure and Redox States† Seth C. Rasmussen Path to the Synthesis of Polyacetylene Films with Metallic Luster: In Response to Rasmussen’s Article Hideki Shirakawa Comments on Shirakawa’s Response Seth C. Rasmussen Lipids, Chloroform, and Their Intertwined Histories Carlos A. Ramírez Professor Alexander Kessenikh (1932-2021) Andrey V. Andreev1, Vadim A. Atsarkin2, Konstantin V. Ivanov1, Gennady E. Kurtik1, Pierandrea Lo Nostro3, Vasily V. Ptushenko4,5, Konstantin A. Tomilin1, Natalia V. Vdovichenko1, Vladimir P. Vizgin1