“Мечты, мечты!
где ваша сладость?”
Alexander Pushkin
It is always an
ethical duty to eulogize and remember good people who have passed on because,
while paying tribute to those who are good, we also point to a model of a real life
worthy of being pursued by all. So many things can be remembered and told about
Dr. Yuri Ivashchenko, who passed away last December; a man of great knowledge
and integrity, continually in search of truth, in science as well as in life.
Dr. Ivashchenko,
“Yuri” for those of us who had the honor and the pleasure of knowing him better,
had the spirit of a real scientist: he was able and willing to question
established paradigms with stringent logic because he was an admirer of truth,
intelligence, and beauty. He was always ready to laugh at a silly argument –
and sometimes to call it for what it was – but he was extremely serious about
every intellectual topic, not only those pertaining to his professional area of
expertise and research. I recall having many passionate discussions with him on
topics ranging from literature and old Russian philosophy to the sciences,
theology, ancient Greek, Latin, archeology, and Opera. Sharply questioning
generally accepted truths was second nature to him. He was a great reader and a
profound scholar with a passion for many topics and a weakness for manuscripts
in Old Church Slavonic and the poet Alexander Pushkin, the latter of which he
loved to the point that he could always quote Pushkin’s poems to you in their
entirety and in the original Russian... The more obscure the topic of study or
discussion, the more his eyes showed the brightness of the intelligent search
and the curiosity of a sharp mind, and when an argument could not be settled in
one way or another, his last answer was always a large smile under his mustache.
You could literally spend hours in intellectual conversation with him and
believe that only a few minutes had passed, and, at the same time, you could always
learn something from his assertions and his questions. For example, many people
are aware of the pseudo-scientific doctrines of Trofim Lysenko and the
“Lysenkoism” propagandized by the Soviets from the 1920s until 1964, the year
of de-Stalinization under Nikita Khrushchev. Yuri, whose specialization was the
field of medicine and biology, liked to point out that movement’s references to
Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin, of whom Lysenko claimed to be a follower, and could
go into extremely complex explanations regarding the differences and commonalities
between the two Russian scientists and their mistakes. Yuri Ivashchenko could
magnificently explain complex topics in the life sciences, but he was also capable
of dissecting pseudo-scientific concepts for hours and he loved hearing about other
examples of pseudoscience in other disciplines because he knew that we learn
from errors as much as we learn from correct reasoning. This, among many other
examples, clearly showed not only his intellectual depth and curiosity but also
his keen scientific mind: a scientist never takes anything for granted, and if
you tell a real scientist that 2+2 is equal to 8, the proper reaction is not to
dismiss what you say, but, more simply, to request the burden of the proof by asking
you to “prove it!” That was the challenge Yuri loved to make.
Yuri was also a
devoted family man and extremely generous, supporting both ideas and people in
many ways, as he did when, in 1995, he sponsored the U.S. immigration of Dr.
Vladimir Vinnitsky, who later became a leading scientist in the oncogerminative
theory of cancer development. Yuri is also the author of dozens of research
papers and many patents. All of this is to say that he was a man of great
intelligence and of many talents, but also a man able to see the very practical
aspects of life, who had a taste for good cuisine and a love for barbecuing and
good wine. Now that Yuri is no longer among us, we are faced with a great
absence. After all, nothing confronts us with the realities of life more than
death, and when this inevitable event strikes, especially when hitting someone who
still had so much to give, it produces an experience that cannot be fully
described, because there are no words or tears that can equal the pain and the
shock that touches those who are remaining. Sorrow is always for those who are
left, and when good people leave the earth, we are all impoverished by their
absence. As C. S. Lewis wrote in his little book of reflections on the death of
his wife, A Grief Observed, “The
death of a beloved is an amputation.” Even when we are sure that those who have
left have ascended to a reality that is so much more real than our imperfectly
formed world, we still have the right to be sad, and to miss their words and
wisdom, which can now point the way only through memory and remembrance.
(Sergio Caldarella)
