Greece wants its statue back from Britain. Britain lent it to Russia. Russia’s mad at the West. This could end many ways.CreditAnatoly Maltsev/European Pressphoto Agency, left; Pool photo by Dmitry Lovetsky
Today, the president of Russia,
Vladimir V. Putin, visited the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, where one of the Parthenon sculptures called the Elgin marbles
went on display Saturday.
It was the first time any of the statuary had left Britain since 1801.
That was when Thomas Bruce, the seventh Earl of Elgin (pronounced in Britain with a hard “g”) and ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, paid to have the marbles shipped to England from Greece.
Then, as now, the move was criticized as cultural theft.
Lord Byron in his 1812 epic poem, “
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” skewered the loss to “fair Greece”: “Dull is the eye that will not weep to see / Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed / By British hands. …”
Keir Giles, a Russia expert in Britain,
speculated that Mr. Putin could step in and return the sculpture to Greece if he decides it meets his political goals.
The Russian leader appears to have kept his own counsel. There was no sign of any public comments after his visit to the museum — or that he had even seen the sculpture.
M.N.: I think he did see the sculpture and did perceive it as a message: he looks very angry.
The Incurable and (most likely) Irreversible Decline of Russian Science: the main problem was not even mentioned (if I read this transcript carefully enough): "BRAIN DRAIN", relentless and accelerating. For any brains, and even much more so for the "scientific ones", to function well and creatively, they have to breathe freely and get enough creative oxygen. In today, Putin's Russia, "they cannot breathe".
(В.ПУТИН: "Мы столкнулись с определёнными вызовами, не буду сейчас об этом говорить.")
The 90% of Russian Scientific Research deals only with the program of armaments.(!)
"...ведущие научные центры, в том числе Академия наук, начинают заниматься на 90 процентов только исследованиями, связанными с программой вооружений."
"...the leading scientific centers, including the Academy of Sciences start to deal at a 90% rate only with the research related to the program of armaments."
А.ФУРСЕНКО:
Что касается остальных ведомств, то они сообщили, что
из 26 федеральных целевых программ, финансируемых за счёт выделяемых на гражданскую науку средств бюджета, ни одна не содержит расходы ни на фундаментальные, ни на поисковые исследования. Хотя когда мы смотрим результат этих работ, то они как раз очень похожи, потому что они кончаются отчётами, кончаются статьями, но не каким-то практическим результатом. Аркадий Владимирович [Дворкович] присутствует здесь, просто чтобы он, может быть, ещё раз критически посмотрел, как обстоят там дела. Мне кажется, что разделение инструментов финансирования для разных стадий научной работы (там, где есть фундаментальная работа, там, где есть НИРы, там, где есть ОКРы) очень важно, потому что иначе деньги перебрасываются на другие цели, и, в общем, они расходуются существенно менее эффективно.
...
В.ФОРТОВ:
При этом особое внимание уделяем импортозамещению и приоритетам, о чём Вы говорили в своём вступительном слове, складывающимся в новых политических и экономических условиях.
Поэтому мы заметно усилили оборонные исследования. Здесь успешно заработала новая форма сотрудничества путём организации виртуальных, совместных с Минобороны научно-технических центров и лабораторий. Мы также ввели отдельную должность вице-президента в нашей структуре по оборонной тематике.
Перечисленные выше направления по инновациям и обороне, экспертизе и прогнозированию могут естественным образом войти в президентскую технологическую инициативу, провозглашённую в Вашем недавнем Послании стране. И мы уже начали работу в этом направлении. Нам представляется это очень интересным направлением.
...
А ведь диагноз-то нашей науке хорошо известен: это крайняя, до 80 процентов изношенность научной инфраструктуры, устаревший, часто реликтовый приборный парк, хроническое недофинансирование, запредельный возраст учёных, молодёжь, жильё, пакет социальных проблем и многое другое, о чём говорят учёные страны многие годы. Мы от этих проблем никуда не денемся, и нам с ФАНО нужно сосредоточиться именно на этих задачах. Только в этом случае реформы принесут ощутимую пользу и получат поддержку, станут понятными учёным страны.
...
М.КОВАЛЬЧУК:
Теперь вопрос в чём? Мы сегодня разбирали природу и шли по пути анализа. Но фактически мы с вами имеем в руках коробку с пазлами. И эти пазлы – это узкие дисциплины, в которых мы достигли глубинного понимания.
Сегодня парадигма науки изменяется, мы можем начать противоположный процесс: из этих отдельных дисциплин складывать единый образ неделимой природы – и фактически перейдём на новый технологический уклад. Но для этого нужна междисциплинарность. Это сегодня стало понятно всем, это изменение парадигмы. Но вопрос заключается в том, кто сможет это сделать. Сегодня вся система организации науки и образования в мире против междисциплинарных исследований.
...
Е.ПРИМАКОВ:
Я тогда работал в Торгово-промышленной палате, и мы провели исследование статистическое, и оно показало, что
только 13 процентов наших промышленников, производителей закупают оборудование сегодняшнего или завтрашнего дня, а остальные все по дешёвке покупают то, что уже ушло. Здесь, мне кажется, очень важно – и не только по этому вопросу – активизировать вот этот центр в Правительстве, о котором Вы говорили в своём Послании Федеральному Собранию. Контроль над этим необходимо установить очень жёсткий.
И второй вопрос. В то же самое время и, судя по публикациям в средствах массовой информации, недостаточное внимание уделили, мне кажется, той части Вашего выступления, где Вы говорите о необходимости диверсификации экономики и необходимости сейчас наряду с сырьевой направленностью, Вы от неё не отказываетесь и правильно делаете, но
нужно несырьевые создавать крупные компании, крупные производители несырьевые. И здесь особое значение должна иметь наука, и я думаю, что Правительству стоило бы сейчас всё-таки откорректировать ту федеральную целевую программу, которая была принята по развитию науки и техники 5 лет тому назад, и до 2020 года она определила всё. Но как можно определить до 2020 года, когда мы сейчас сталкиваемся с совершенно новыми проблемами?
...
А.ДВОРКОВИЧ:
По содержанию. Какая сейчас есть проблема в связи с бюджетными ограничениями? Поскольку
растет только бюджет, связанный с военными разработками,
ведущие научные центры, в том числе Академия наук, начинают заниматься на 90 процентов только исследованиями, связанными с программой вооружений. Это, с одной стороны, отвечает приоритетам нынешнего периода, с другой стороны, ведет к деградации гражданских исследований во многих центрах.
...
Н.ТЕСТОЕДОВ:
Если позволите, я сошлюсь на пример, потому что рядом [с этим залом в Эрмитаже] Зал воинской славы.
В свое время достаточно продвинутый менеджер и управленец Наполеон Бонапарт ответил Роберту Фултону, изобретателю парохода, предложившему ему план пароходного флота для завоевания Англии, следующим образом: «Вы предлагаете, чтобы корабль плыл против течения и против волн, разведя огонь под палубой? У меня нет времени на эти бредни». После этого Англия осталась, Наполеон пошел на Россию, и история изменилась.
...
В.ПУТИН: Спасибо
По поводу того, что растут только исследования, связанные с обороной, это не совсем так. Они растут, эти исследования, потому что рост был предусмотрен соответствующей программой вооружений и программами исследований. Но и они тоже, имея в виду бюджетные ограничения, растут не так, как было предусмотрено первоначально, а эти темпы роста сокращаются так же как, собственно, сокращаются некоторые другие темпы роста финансирования по некоторым другим направлениям.
...
Когда мы говорим
о некоторых отраслях производства, которые сейчас насыщаются деньгами гособоронзаказа до 2020 года, то я все время не устаю повторять [следующее]. Вот смотрите, допустим,
судостроительные предприятия, какие-то другие сейчас имеют большое количество заказов, но они [заказы] не вечно будут. Вот
произойдет обновление Армии и Флота, а мы переразмерим сейчас возможности, нам нужно либо плавнее это делать на предприятиях, либо заранее посмотреть, как это будет использоваться, те мощности, которые будут созданы. То же самое мы должны делать и в научных исследованиях, ровно то же самое. Конечно, это не одно и то же, но принцип должен быть такой.
M.N. comments: I wonder why Mr. Usmanov did not donate these money: $4.8 ml to the development of biomedical science in Russia, where it is in such dire straits. Apparently he was motivated by some higher strategic interests.
See also:
I have to make some corrections in my previous description of actual Watson's medal: prince Igor is still there, noble and unmoved, but Mama Russia is not on her knees any more (apparently, she received some timely help and support from this medico-financial intervention), and she is not pulling her sister Ukraine by her hair (that was in another medal), but holds her, rather indifferently, looking aside, by her left breast, as if trying to clutch her heart. Poor sister Ukraine, already without baby Crimea, looks like she is half dead, trying to catch her breath but unable to release herself from this somewhat possessive sisterly embrace and pleading in vain for her freedom. This might be even more realistic reflection of the state of affairs in this story of "sisterly love". Thank you, Mr. Usmanov, for your boundless concern for humanity and devotion to practical reality, if not scientific naturalism. Nice job, Vovchick! Very impressive. Good luck with developing Russian science. Maybe you could buy it, too. Even if they say that there are some things in life that cannot be bought. Very few things are impossible for Russian autocrats and oligarchs. (Till their time comes.)
A Russian entrepreneur and philanthropist revealed on Tuesday that he was the winning bidder at
the auction of
James D. Watson’s 1962
Nobel Prize last week and that he planned to return the medal to Dr. Watson — “the person who deserved it.”
The Nobel was awarded to Dr. Watson, now 86, and two colleagues, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, for their discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA, which revealed how genetic traits are transmitted through heredity.
The buyer, Alisher Usmanov, who lives in Moscow, announced through the London public relations firm Finsbury that he was the anonymous telephone bidder who paid $4.1 million for the gold medal on Thursday at a Christie’s auction, or $4.76 million including the commission. Christie’s, which said the bid was a record for a Nobel sold at auction, confirmed Tuesday that Mr. Usmanov was the buyer.
In a statement, Mr. Usmanov indicated that he was distressed that Dr. Watson was selling the medal in order to give much of the proceeds to charity, and he wanted to fulfill Dr. Watson’s charitable impulse without forcing him to give up the physical manifestation of his prize.
“In my opinion, a situation in which an outstanding scientist has to sell a medal recognizing his achievements is unacceptable," Mr. Usmanov said. “James Watson is one of the greatest biologists in the history of mankind and his award for the discovery of DNA structure must belong to him.”
Mr. Usmanov had contacted Dr. Watson before the auction, offering to give him a cash gift to give to charity if he would call off the auction, a spokesman for Dr. Watson, David Kass, said Tuesday. “Dr. Watson graciously told him that he wanted the auction to continue,” Mr. Kass said. “He didn’t think it would be right to just call it off, and he wanted to see how it would play out.”
The auction – which came down to fierce bidding with another anonymous bidder by phone – brought in more than Mr. Usmanov’s original offer, Mr. Kass said. “Obviously he’s overjoyed to be getting it back,” he said of Dr. Watson. “He’s humbled by it.”
Dr. Watson, who lives in a house at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, where he is chancellor emeritus, said
before the auction that one of his motivations for selling the medal for charity was to restore some of his reputation. He said he had become an outcast in the scientific community after he was
quoted in 2007 questioning the innate intelligence of black people, remarks he apologized for.
Mr. Usmanov said his father had died of cancer, so he valued Dr. Watson’s contributions to cancer research, and hoped that research would continue. “It is important for me that the money that I spent on this medal will go to supporting scientific research, and the medal will stay with the person who deserved it,” he said. “I wouldn’t like the medal of the distinguished scientist to be an object on sale.”
The sale of the medal — which cost Usmanov $4.8 million including commission — set a record for the sale of such a medal and was the first time one has been sold by a living recipient. Usmanov said today that he would give him back the medal as well as giving him the cash for it.
Usmanov said that he had been motivated to buy and return the medal to avoid Watson having to sell it. He values Watson's work because of his contribution to cancer research, the disease fro mwhich Usmanov's father died, he said.
Watson, who has been spurned by the scientific community in the wake of controversial comments, told the Financial Times in November that he planned to use the sale to ‘re-enter public life’, and would use the funds generated to buy art, supplement his income and give money to educational institutions.
“In my opinion, a situation in which an outstanding scientist has to sell a medal recognising his achievements is unacceptable,” Usmanov said. “James Watson is one of the greatest biologists in the history of mankind and his award for the discovery of DNA structure must belong to him.
“I wouldn’t like the medal of the distinguished scientist to be an object on sale.”
Watson's Nobel Prize medal sold at auction for $4.7 million
Watson will give some of the money back to research institututions that have ‘nurtured him’, including the University of Chicago, Indiana University and Cambridge University, where DNA was discovered.
Watson has been embroiled in controversy since his discovery, for both his scientific and political work. He has been accused of using results discovered by other scientists without being authorised to do so, as well as being attacked for his political views.
He has supported the selective abortion of gay children, endorsed the view that dark-skinned people have higher sex drives and was forced to retire as chancellor of a laboratory after being quoted saying that
Africans are less intelligent than westerners.
In the news
“James Watson is one of the greatest biologists in the history of mankind and his award for ...
Russian billionaire praises work of DNA biologist ostracised for linking intelligence to race
Seven years after one of the godfathers of DNA,
James D. Watson, lost some of his reputation through remarks about race, he is hoping for a measure of redemption by putting his
Nobel Prizemedal up for auction on Thursday and donating much of the proceeds to educational institutions.
Dr. Watson, with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, received the award in 1962 for the discovery nine years earlier of the double-helix structure of DNA, which revealed how genetic traits were transmitted through heredity. This has become the foundation of the now booming field of genomics, which has revolutionized the treatment of disease.
But he is also well known as a provocateur, a reputation advanced by his candid accounts in his 1968 memoir, “
The Double Helix,” of competition among scientists, and cemented in 2007, when he questioned the I.Q. of black people. Though he apologized, saying there was no scientific basis for his remarks, the outcry over them
made him retire from his position as chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island.
“Thomas Jefferson said some controversial things too in his life,” said Francis Wahlgren, international director of printed books and manuscripts for Christie’s, which is
auctioning the medal. “As far as Christie’s is concerned, the monumental discovery of the double helix is what this is about, and the 1962 recognition is an essential part of that. Posterity will remember him for that, whether he said things that are controversial or not.”
Christie’s estimates the medal will sell for $2.5 million to $3.5 million. Mr. Wahlgren said the medal, made out of 23-karat gold, is worth about $20,000 to $30,000 for its gold alone — just a trifle in proportion to its weight as intellectual property.
Christie’s is also auctioning Dr. Watson’s notes for his Nobel acceptance speech (estimated worth: $300,000 to $400,000) and the manuscript for the lecture he gave the day after he received the medal ($200,000 to $300,000).
The medal belonging to Dr. Watson’s main partner in the discovery, Dr. Crick,
sold posthumously last year for $2.27 million to Jack Wang, chief executive of a Chinese biotech company.
Christie’s said it believed that Dr. Watson’s would be the first-ever sale of a Nobel medal by a living prize winner.
Responding to questions by email on Wednesday, Dr. Watson, 86, expressed regret for his 2007 remarks, saying: “I can’t undo that. I do wish that I had been more careful in speaking about things I’m not expert in.”
In the 2007 interview, in The Sunday Times of London Magazine, he told a former protégée, Charlotte Hunt-Grubbe, that he felt gloomy about Africa because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours, whereas all the testing says not really.”
He also said that “people who have to deal with black employees” found that everyone was not equal.
Last week, he told The Financial Times that the interview had turned him into an “unperson.”
He added that he was selling his medal because he needed the money, having been ousted from boards of companies. And somewhat puckishly, he admitted to a desire to buy a painting by
David Hockney.
On Wednesday, Dr. Watson said that most of the money would go to support institutions that had nurtured him, like the University of Chicago, which he entered as a 15-year-old undergraduate; Indiana University, where he received his Ph.D.; Cambridge, where he worked with Dr. Crick; and the Cold Spring Harbor Lab. “The sale is to support and empower scientific discovery,” he said.
As for the Hockney, he had that in mind as a gift to the lab, which, he noted, also needs a gymnasium.
While he will always cherish the Nobel, he said, his gold medal has been hidden away in a safe deposit box for 52 years. A replica, also given by the Nobel committee, “has a place of honor in my home.”
Dr. Watson said he might keep a small amount of the proceeds from the sale for himself and his family, after he fulfilled his philanthropic goals.
He is far from destitute. He is still chancellor emeritus at Cold Spring Harbor, where he participates in conferences and is also active in fund-raising and development, a spokeswoman said. He lives in a house provided by the organization. He earned a base pay of $375,000 in 2012, and received $568,860 in total compensation and benefits that year, according to the laboratory’s most recent available tax filings.
In his 1968 memoir, Dr. Watson confessed that a rival involved in DNA research once archly called him “Honest Jim,” and that there were many instances of his being indiscreet.
He called DNA “the Rosetta Stone for unraveling the true secret of life,” and the key to how genes determined everything from hair and eye color to “most likely our comparative intelligence, and maybe even our potential to amuse others.”
In her 2007 article, Ms. Hunt-Grubbe also recalled Dr. Watson’s saying that a woman who wanted grandchildren should be able to abort a homosexual child if that trait could be detected prenatally.
Many readers of “The Double Helix” faulted him for not adequately recognizing the work of a female scientist,
Rosalind Franklin, in the 1953 discovery of the DNA structure. It is not clear whether Dr. Franklin, who died in 1958 of ovarian cancer at age 37, might have been included in the prize if she had lived — the Nobel is not awarded posthumously, nor is it split more than three ways.
Bruce Stillman, president of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, said on Wednesday that he hoped Dr. Watson’s tremendous accomplishments — which continued long after his discovery of the double helix when he was just 24 — would not be eclipsed by such controversies.
Dr. Watson helped establish the
Human Genome Project with the National Institutes of Health, and insisted on setting aside a portion of the funding to consider the ethical issues of genetic science.
In 1965, he wrote an influential textbook on the
molecular biology of the gene. “The Double Helix” was both a best-seller and part of the Library of Congress 2012 exhibit “
Books That Shaped America,” which included titles such as Melville’s “Moby-Dick,” Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” and Frederick Douglass’s first autobiography.
Dr. Watson suggested the proceeds from the auction would allow him, if not to do penance, then to make up for lost time.
“It is wonderful to be in a position to do great things, to make things happen,” he said in the email. “To have that, and then not, is disheartening. I think I could have been far more useful in this time.”
Correction: December 3, 2014
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the year James D. Watson wrote his influential textbook on the molecular biology of the gene. It was 1965, not 1986.
Read the whole story
· · · · ·
James D. Watson’s 1962
Nobel Prize medal for sharing in the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA, the foundation of the new science of genomics, sold for $4.1 million at auction on Thursday.
The price for
the gold medal, sold at
Christie’s in Manhattan, came in higher than the house’s estimate of $2.5 million to $3.5 million, and was a record for a Nobel sold at auction, Christie’s said.
The medal sold to an anonymous buyer who bid by phone. Including the buyer’s premium, which goes to the auction house, the total price was $4.76 million.
Dr. Watson, 86, watched the auction open-mouthed from the back of the room with his wife and one of his sons as the bidding, which began at $1.5 million, rose steadily by $100,000 increments, eventually coming down to two phone bidders who pushed the price above $4 million. He said
before the sale that he wanted to give much of the proceeds to educational institutions that had nurtured him, to “support and empower scientific discovery.”
After the sale, he said: “I’m very pleased. It’s more money than I expected to give to charity.”
The sale also became symbolic of a quest for redemption after he became what he called an “unperson” in the scientific community seven years ago; he had told The Sunday Times of London Magazine in an interview that he was pessimistic about Africa because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours, whereas all the testing says not really.”
Dr. Watson
apologized at the time for those remarks: “To those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief.”
The medal belonging to Dr. Watson’s main partner in the discovery, Francis Crick,
sold posthumously last year for $2.27 million to Jack Wang, chief executive of a Chinese biotech company.
Christie’s also auctioned Dr. Watson’s notes for his Nobel acceptance speech for $365,000, and the manuscript for the lecture he gave the day after he received the medal went for $245,000; both amounts were in line with presale estimates. A single anonymous bidder, different from the Nobel medal buyer, took both documents.
Dr. Watson said most of the money would go to support institutions that had nurtured him, like the University of Chicago, which he entered as a 15-year-old undergraduate; Indiana University, where he received his Ph.D.; Cambridge, where he worked with Dr. Crick; and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, where he has worked for many years.
He had thought he could help pay for a gymnasium for the lab. “I’m very keen on exercise because I think it makes me a better scientist,” he said. “I play very hard tennis.”
But the gym remains out of reach: It would have been possible, he said on Thursday, only if the medal sold for $10 million.
Dr. Watson was only 24 when he made the discovery, with Dr. Crick and Maurice Wilkins. (Some have questioned whether Dr. Wilkins’s colleague Rosalind Franklin, whose X-ray image of a molecule of DNA helped clarify the discovery, should have received more credit.) In his 1968 memoir, Dr. Watson called DNA “the Rosetta Stone for unraveling the true secret of life,” and the key to how genes determined everything from hair and eye color to “most likely our comparative intelligence, and maybe even our potential to amuse others.”
M.N.: And that's how the Nobel Peace Medal looks like. Very gayish, by the way: nice looking guys. Don't you think so, Vovchick?
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