The Wizard of IKI

By Dick Thompson/Moscow

Wearing a stylish pinstripe, double-breasted suit, Roald Sagdeyev, the director of the Soviet Space Research Institute, began by disarming the group of Cornell astronomers during a recent U.S. tour with a folksy story about a Russian woodsman. Then, in a voice strained from singing When the Saints Go Marching In to Soviets and Americans gathered at the Chautauqua Institution, he discussed the dangers of nuclear weapons and the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or Star Wars. Finally, the trim, 5-ft. 8-in. physicist, who rarely drinks and never smokes, concluded with his vision for a joint U.S.-U.S.S.R. mission to Mars. The performance was vintage Sagdeyev: a mixture of wit, charm and trenchant observation.

Besides being an accomplished scientist and administrator, Sagdeyev is the Soviet Union's chief space diplomat. He spent more than two weeks in August flying from the U.S.S.R. to Hawaii, New York and Washington to recruit scientists for Soviet missions and to publicize Moscow's space program. His dizzying schedule of speeches, meetings and interviews has forced him to all but abandon his dacha outside Moscow and even his burning passion, chess. In recognition of his achievements at the Soviet Space Institute (IKI), he was chosen to head the Soviets' new Supercomputing Institute and was appointed as Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev's special adviser on the U.S. Star Wars program.

Born in Moscow, Sagdeyev, 54, once planned to become a mathematician, like both of his parents. But as a student at Moscow University in the mid-1950s, he switched majors to study physics. "A physicist can still enjoy the beauty of mathematics and have a more intimate interaction with nature," he says. Sagdeyev also took up English, which he calls the "first necessity for a scientist." He passed along his appreciation of the language to his son and daughter, both computer scientists, and to his two small grandchildren.

While working on nuclear-fission control at the Soviet Institute of Atomic Energy in 1958, the young scientist was stunned by his first meeting, in Geneva, with scientists from outside the Soviet Union. He still relates the experience with wonder: "For the first time I met foreign scientists, Americans, doing the same job and reporting their results. It was like meeting extraterrestrials -- extraterrestrials working with the same laws of physics. It was exemplary proof that science has no borders."

Sagdeyev increasingly found traditional Soviet science, influenced heavily by Communist Party politics, stifling. In 1961 he helped found Akademgorodok (Science City), an informal think tank located in the Siberian countryside, away from the intensely political atmosphere of Moscow. Sagdeyev was at first concerned about neglecting his research when he was asked to assume control of the struggling space-science program at IKI in 1973. The position offered a measure of independence (though hardly on a level enjoyed by top NASA scientists), but it was still part of the rigid Soviet scientific bureaucracy. Recalls Sagdeyev: "It meant a big change in my life-style. There was a desire to do my own research and yet the obligation to run a large institution with many projects. But I didn't expect such a long imprisonment."

Not surprisingly, he is an avid computer buff. It is a passion that is not shared by his wife. When she heard he had spent a small fee from the University of California on computer equipment for the Soviets' Young Cosmonaut Club, an organization for youngsters interested in space, she sighed with a smile and said, "There goes my fur coat."

Sagdeyev continues to speak out against Soviet practices that restrict research. Besides publicly criticizing the dismal state of Soviet astrophysics, he has overridden official Soviet reluctance to provide computers and electronic copiers to scientists. Sagdeyev recently told members of the Soviet Academy of Sciences that progress cannot be made "until we stop treating copying machines like class enemies." Indeed, he is all too familiar with the damage done when researchers filter science through political ideals. The principle, he notes with a sly twinkle, also extends to scientists in the U.S. -- especially to those who support "your SDI."