I’ve been thinking about “good person” and “good specialist” — can these concepts be opposed? Who causes more harm to all of us — a good specialist who’s a bad person, or the reverse?

In a society divided into rulers and oppressed, the actions of a leader-specialist were extremely authoritative to those below because of the gap in education and social status. So his personal qualities weren’t decisive — he already stood above others. The author of the Pyramid of Cheops was a master of his craft and treated people as executors of his will, not like-minded allies. This didn’t prevent the creation of magnificent monuments, but at unjustified cost.

In our days, intellect has become a social concept. A leader is promoted not only for knowledge but for the ability to organize people and create an atmosphere of like-minded collaborators. Here personal qualities — civic and human — are inseparable from professional knowledge.

Now we’re doing preparatory work with the “Korund” furnace. Twice we fired it up, and each time after two and a half hours there was an alarm for overheating. We need to investigate. The ground asked me to enter 325 six-digit codes into the “Delta” system. Entering codes, my eyes go hazy from numbers — make one mistake and the checksum won’t match and you start all over. Some job! Fine if everything goes right, but I lost half a day on two errors in the radiogram.

I started working on my doctoral dissertation materials. Compiling a table of astrophysical sources. And I found an old issue of “Golos Rodiny,” the newspaper for compatriots abroad. It was sent to me as a member of the editorial board, and this issue had an interview with Lyusya. I read it and tears welled up when she tells how Vitalka, treating his friends, says: “Please, have some.” I pictured his face, eyes, the way he says it. He’s growing up kind and delights in doing nice things for his friends. As a father, this makes me happy.