On November 20, 2014, the winners of the 7th annual Enlightener Prize in the field of non-fiction literature were announced. In anticipation of the ceremony, we asked Dmitry Zimin, co-founder of the award, founder of the Dynasty Foundation, several questions.
The scale of the educational program of the Enlightener award is admirable: it is a science festival and lecture tours around Russian cities, seminars, excursions and open lessons. But above all, Illuminator is an annual award in the field of popular science literature. It was books that we talked about with a businessman, philanthropist and educator, founder of the first private non-profit foundation in modern Russia that supports science and education, Dmitry Borisovich Zimin.
Psychologies: For many years you have been supporting the Enlightener Prize, which opens the best popular science books published in our country to a wide audience. Do you read these books yourself? Which of them impressed you the most?
Dmitry Zimin: I myself do not read all the books, because every year more than a hundred of them come to the jury, but I always look and scroll through everything. And I read many books from cover to cover. All of them give me great pleasure! But these are books of different genres and on different topics, it is difficult to compare them. So I’d rather name a few outstanding books in different fields. Among the books on the exact sciences, Leonid Ponomarev’s book “Under the Sign of the Quantum” (Fizmatlit, 2007) made a great impression on me at one time. Fascinating reading, moreover, equipped with very interesting marginalia – marginal notes, digressions dedicated to scientists, biographical information. Another brilliant book, one of my favorites in the field, is Why the Sky Is Dark. How the Universe works” by Vladimir Reshetnikov (Vek2, 2012). With its genuine scientific character and seriousness, it is very easy to read. To some extent, Boris Stern’s new book “Breaking Beyond the Edge of the World” (Trinity version, 2014) competes with it – it appeared only this year and entered the short list of “Enlightener”. But this is definitely not a book for tram reading: it is intended for a thoughtful reader. This is a story about the latest discoveries in the field of cosmogony, knowledge of the Universe, about the cutting edge of modern science.
Have you managed to find among the books of winners and nominees for all these years the “book of your dreams”, for the sake of which (and similar ones) the award was partly started? Or are you still waiting for it?
D. Z .: It is difficult for me to single out one single book that hooked me the most. Now, if I were asked what book I consider the best popular science book of all times and peoples, I would name Matvey Bronstein’s Solar Matter. Of course, she could not be among the nominees for the Enlightener award, since it was published by Detgiz in 1936! But ten years ago it was released again by the Kvant publishing house. There is a part about radio in this book, and I must admit that I, a professional radio operator, radio amateur and radio engineer, read it in one breath and discovered a lot for myself.
All the works you mentioned are from the field of exact sciences. What about natural?
D. Z .: From books on biology and ethology, I recommend to everyone the book “Naughty Child of the Biosphere” by Viktor Dolnik (Petroglyph, 2009), as well as Alexander Markov’s two-volume “Human Evolution” (Corpus, 2012). We were afraid that no one would buy and read the two-volume book – but the book sold like hot cakes! This is amazingly interesting and directly related to our society, our everyday life.
The books of all the finalists and laureates of the Enlightener Prize are available on the website premiaprosvetitel.ru