Zhores I. Alferov Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
Page 5 of 5
One final question, requiring a short answer: Are you hopeful about science both in your country and internationally, and what it can still accomplish to change the world?
Yes. I am absolutely still hopeful, and always I am speaking to young students when I deliver some lectures. I always say as follows: the modern science is science by modern way, not exactly, but a modern one because maybe in Russia in which it's a little bit different sense. And you understand what I like to say. It's young. It's only 300 years. Because the modern science started with Newton, with Ayler, with Leibnitz. It's the roots of the modern science. And these 300 years of science changed the world absolutely. Everything what we have in our civilization we were getting from basic research and their applications. And it would be farther and farther, and science always would be the main engine for the development of civilization. Of course, you can use the results of this engine by different way. You can create energy sources and atomic bombs. You can use an information internet for good and for bad things. If you look to the TV, you can watch very good programs and you can watch the programs when you just like immediately to turn off. Just remember what Yulian Tovim, the famous Polish poet said. He said not about TV, about radio -- he said, "Radio, ingenious invention, because just one movement by hand and [makes a "vanishing" gesture]."
On that note, I want to thank you very much for taking the time to come to our program and to share with us this extraordinary intellectual odyssey. Thank you very much.
Thank you, also, for invitation. I always very like to be in Berkeley.
Good. Thank you. And we hope that next time, the people giving you a visa will watch this interview and they'll know what heterostructures are. Thank you very much, and thank you very much for joining us for this Conversation with History.
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