M. Miller

“REPORT ON THE LIVED LIFE: FOR FUN AND IN REAL EARNEST,
dedicated to my own 80-th birthday”

The book “Report on the Lived Life: For Fun and in Real Earnest” is compiled of miscellaneous texts written by Mikhail Adol'fovich Miller, Chief Scientist at the Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Some of them were published before – in journal articles, pamphlets, and books. Here they appear in a revised form, complemented, updated and, which is the most important, arranged so as to reflect the evolution of scientific, quasi-scientific and non-scientific fancies of the author. To a certain approximation, this is a “report on the lived life”, except for the purely professional problems penetration into which would imply a special educational basis of the reader. Meanwhile this book, as is hinted by its somewhat frivolous title, may be attractive for readers of almost unlimited “scope of curiosity”. This is clear already from the names of the chapters listed in the contents: Personal history. Scientific preferences (differentiation of human mentality, history of electromagnetism, waves, waves, waves, jump over the second Millenium, etc.), stories about the people who played a determining role in the scientific fate of the author (M.T. Grekhova, A.A. Andronov, G.S. Gorelik, M.L. Levin, V.L. Ginzburg, M.A. Leontovich, and others), various essays (about physicists, mathematicians, artists, men of law, and so on), jubilee celebrations and parodies; finally, some poetic samples are also included. Upon the whole, some sections are written “in real earnest”, while others are not quite serious.

The book is bound to be interesting not only to the author's friends, but also to many other readers who are likely to become his friends on reading his self-report. We hope that everyone who opens this book, by chance or following somebody's advice will find something enthralling in it. Even if it's only something!

The author made use of the pictures by D.M. Mezentsev
The portrait and print on the cover are by M.S. Vidensky
The cover is designed by S. Krotova

Nizhny Novgorod: IAP RAS, 2005. — 480 p.