On 9 June in Dubna, Daria Dudina, Egor Kuznetsov, and Edoardo La Malfa, the winners of the Big Break All-Russian competition for schoolchildren, met with FLNR JINR Scientific Leader Academician Yuri Tsolakovich Oganessian. Anna Krat, a teacher from Podolsk, was also invited to the meeting.

School students Daria Dudina from the Saratov region and Egor Kuznetsov from Kaluga won the competition “Letter to the scientist ”, which was organized in November 2021 by the Big Break project together with the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research to promote interest in science among schoolchildren all over the world.

Daria and Egor wrote the most interesting letters to the physicist, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yuri Tsolakovich Oganessian, after whom the chemical element 118, oganesson, was named in recognition of his scientific achievements. Yuri Oganessian is the only person in the world whose address can be written in chemical elements:

Ru (ruthenium) – Russia,
• Mc (moscovium) – Moscow region,
• Db (dubnium) – Dubna,
• Fl (flerovium) – Flerov Street,
• Og (oganesson) – Oganessian Yuri Tsolakovich.

And Yuri Oganessian’s house is known to every postman in town.

Another winner is Edoardo La Malfa, a school student who wrote a letter from Italy. Yuri Tsolakovich also invited Anna Krat from Podolsk, a primary school teacher who wrote him a letter asking what is the most important thing she needs to teach children.

The winners spent two days in Dubna. On 8 June, they went on a tour of JINR, where they visited the Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions and the Laboratory of Information Technologies. They also saw the panel “Mendeleev’s Periodic Table ”, the largest one in Europe, Asia, and America, which was unveiled last year on the embankment of the Volga river on the initiative of Academician Oganessian. Today, on 9 June, the competition winners met with Yuri Tsolakovich and asked him their questions in person. Edoardo La Malfa also took part in the meeting online.

“I am not surprised by the starry-eyed children and their thirst for knowledge, I’ve always thought that young people should have such a reaction to new knowledge, to new opportunities. That’s really nice. I believe if a young person comes to you, you need to – no, you just have to – respond, accept, and pay attention to them. Because that’s how they react”, Yuri Oganessian said after the event.

“Yuri Tsolakovich is an amazing, brilliant man! He is ahead of his time and drives progress forward, so meeting him was a real dream, I’ve been waiting for it for a year. At the meeting I was so touched and couldn’t believe my happiness that I was ready to burst into tears,” Daria Dudina shared her impressions. “In Dubna we visited a huge number of museums. For example, we visited the Museum of History of Science and Technology of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research. We were given passes to enter the Institute because it is a strategic location. All the tours were conducted by true professionals; it was incredibly interesting to listen to them!”

“Yuri Tsolakovich is a great man. Meeting him is probably comparable only to the meeting of contemporaries with Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky. I learned from Yuri Tsolakovich’s reply letter that synthesising new elements is endless. I would also like to know how he would call a new element. How emotional was it for him when he made his discovery? And many other things. For example, does he have any pets and what is his favorite food? I asked him why ether was removed from Mendeleev’s Table. Yuri Tsolakovich explains very clearly. I want to link my life to physics or chemistry and would be happy to learn from him and then to work at JINR,” Egor Kuznetsov said after the meeting.