Table of contents

The current status of elementary particle physics can be briefly summarized as follows: the Standard Model of elementary particles is perfectly (at the level of radiation effects!) adequate in describing all the available experimental data except for the recent indications of neutrino oscillations. At the same time, much (and possibly most) of today's cosmology is not encompassed by the Standard Model — a fact which, together with intrinsic theoretical difficulties and the neutrino oscillation challenge, strongly indicates that the Standard Model is incomplete. It is expected that in the current decade a 'new physics', i.e. particles and interactions beyond the Standard Model, will emerge. Major advances in cosmology, both in terms of qualitatively improved observations and theoretical analysis of the structure and evolution of the Universe, are expected as well.

The unity of mathematics and physics is emphasized in a paper previously presented, in part, in 1998 at a meeting of the French Mathematical Society, and at the Russian Academy of Sciences (seminar at the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics and V L Ginzburg's seminar at the Physics Institute).

Events of world importance have necessitated a change to a new basis of life and economy of a multimillion population on an immense territory. Such work in each particular area calls for a deep, cautious and circumstantial analysis, because the human mind is given to taking the probable for the true, and, resorting to fanciful reasoning, arrives at wrong results rather than correct conclusions. Because of this we deemed it worthwhile to remember the life of a philosopher who called for special caution in reasoning, and who even resolved to put forward his own method for rightly conducting the reason. The life of this philosopher and the basics of his teaching were described with amazing power and brevity by one of the greatest mathematicians of the last century, C G Jakobi, in a public lecture delivered in Berlin on January 3, 1846. This lecture was published in volume 7 of Jacobi's 'Gesammelte Werke'. Such publications rarely fall into the hands of readers other than specialists in mathematics. This is the reason why we believe that the publication of the translation of this lecture in Physics–Uspekhi is appropriate and timely.

This article deals with the almost 'thirty-year war' led by physicists against the authorities' incompetent philosophical and ideological interference with science. The 'war' is shown to have been related to the history of Soviet nuclear weapons. Theoretical milestones of 20th century physics, to wit, theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, suffered endless 'attacks on philosophical grounds'. The theories were proclaimed idealistic as well as unduly abstract and out of touch with practice; their authors and followers were labelled 'physical idealists', and later, in the 1940s and 1950s, even 'cosmopolitans without kith or kin'. Meanwhile, quantum and relativistic theories, as is widely known, had become the basis of nuclear physics and of the means of studying the atomic nucleus (charged particle accelerators, for instance). The two theories thus served, to a great extent, as a basis for both peaceful and military uses of nuclear energy, made possible by the discovery of uranium nuclear fission under the action of neutrons. In the first part, the article recounts how prominent physicists led the way to resisting philosophical and ideological pressure and standing up for relativity, quantum theories and nuclear physics, thus enabling the launch of the atomic project. The second part contains extensive material proving the point that physicists effectively used the 'nuclear shield' in the 1940s and 1950s against the 'philosophical-cosmopolitan' pressure, indeed saving physics from a tragic fate as that of biology at the Academy of Agricultural Sciences (VASKhNIL) session in 1948.