He ran the Soviet space program at the height of the Cold War and went on to fall in love with the granddaughter of former President Dwight Eisenhower.
Roald Sagdeev, a Russian scientist and distinguished physics professor, sat down before 70 students, faculty and community members Thursday night — just more than six weeks after he celebrated his 80th birthday — to speak candidly about his legacy and accomplishments.
Sagdeev served as the director of the Space Research Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences from 1973 to 1988, and he also advised former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. To commemorate Sagdeev’s December birthday, the physics department sponsored a two-day symposium featuring a series of discussions on space, plasma and nuclear science.
However, those topics were not on the table at Thursday night’s discussion. Instead, National Public Radio journalist Daniel Zwerdling queried Sagdeev about his experiences with the Soviet Union regime and his high-profile romance. When asked about the moment he first realized he loved science, Sagdeev described his decision to turn down the top position in his high school’s communist youth group in order to pursue his interest in science.
Sagdeev went on to gain international recognition for his work in plasma physics, and he become one of the youngest scientists to ever be elected a full academician at the Academy of Sciences of the USSR at the age of 35. He was director of the Soviet Space Research and, during his involvement with the Russian government, he was the lone dissenting vote against a law repressing political demonstration.
Near the end of the interview, Zwerdling brought up Sagdeev’s love affair with Susan Eisenhower. The two met at a conference in 1987, and Sagdeev smiled as Zwerdling repeated the first words Sagdeev said to Eisenhower – “You look just like your grandfather.” The two would go on to exchange letters with coded words, such as “bilateral relations.” While Sagdeev declined to go into much detail about the romance, he suggested Eisenhower herself, who was sitting in the front row, would take the opportunity to talk.
Eisenhower told the audience about a walk she and Sagdeev took several days after they first met, during which Sagdeev confided to her his moral struggle to work for the Soviet regime while retaining a good conscience.
“It’s was such an emotional conversation,” she said. “In those days to know that a person of that importance felt that way was really an important piece of information.”Eisenhower and Sagdeev married in 1990 and divorced in 2008. Several audience members enjoyed hearing about their romance.
“I was most interested hearing a scientist talk about love,” sophomore physics major Fatima Abdurrahman said. “There’s such a humanizing aspect to that.”
At the end of the interview, Sagdeev welcomed questions from the audience. He declined to speak at length about Russian politics, saying, “I don’t think I have the right to talk about it.” However, he made one comment about Russian President Vladimir Putin — “He looks to be the friend of oligarchs.”
What will the world be doing in space in 20 years?
“If we’re smart, we’ll do everything in a robotic way,” Sagdeev said. “Smart, tiny robots doing whatever we need.”
Michael Roberts, a freshman computer science, mathematics and physics major, agreed with that assertion.
“The way [Sagdeev] was able to work as a scientist and advance history not only in his field but out of it was really inspiring to me as a physics student,” Roberts said.
