Bartini, little known genius

Roberto Oros di Bartini

Roberto Oros di Bartini  was a genius. The only difference between him and a few well known greatest scientists of all times is that his name is familiar only to the specialists in the aviation industry, due to many specific reasons. First, as a young Italian communist, he probably worked for Russian intelligence. Second, after he moved to the USSR, he designed the most advanced military aircraftс and, naturally, was hidden from the public eye. Third, by his own nature, Bartini did not seek publicity and did not care about credit. Vast majority of his designs are attributed to others, who knowingly or not took advantage of his discoveries. All he cared about was understanding of the world around him and the universe as the whole.

He published a paper in 1966 – way before the string theory. You can read comments to this article by Arkady Aseev here. Оr you can read how the fist reviewer S.S.Gershtein perceived the original article, discussed it with the author and how it was published at all, here (just search for “Bartini”).

The following three points of the article make it great in my incompetent eyes:
– a speciment A, mentioned in the article, is actually our universe;
– the values of the physical constants (we used to think we can get only from the experiment – by measuring something) he derives just logically from the most probable topological properties of the speciment A; such an approach was criticized by some folks later, but I am not good enough in this area to take sides;
– the table in the article captures all discovered and not yet discovered physical laws; it is built like a Mendeleev table of chemical elements, providing systematic view of the physical world and discovering the internal symmetry of the laws we use to describe it.

Fascinating, ah? Puzzling? Bizzare? Indeed. As you can see, the first English version of this article appears in the western world only in 2005 – thirty-nine years after it was first published. All those years, many Russian scientists struggled to put their heads around this matter. Some ended up calling the author a crazy old man (Bartini was 69 when the article was published). Others accepted the fact that they did not know physics enough to provide meaningful commentary. Very few picked up bits and pieces and worked on them since, amazed how much knowledge each such a bit requires, while Bartini knew it all – across all branches of science and engineering.

Bartini Beriev VVA-14

It is easy to draw a parallel between Bartini and da Vinci. Both were Italian. Both deeply understood and appreciated arts, science, and technology. Both drew very well with both hands at the same time. Both had initiated and did not see the implementation of the most advanced – for their time – technical projects. And both left notes that still fascinate people and provide a source of inspiration and research long after their death.

Sergey Korolev – the father of the Russian space program – called Bartini his teacher. Without Bartini, Russian technological advancements would be much less impressive than they were. This fact was well known on the highest level of the Soviet government. Not once, during the discussion of the next technological challenge in the high office, when stuck, somebody would say: “Hey, we have Bartini. Let us give him the task. If he cannot solve it, then nobody can.”

What fascinates me personally, besides all the legends and stories surrounding the name, are two facts:
– Bartini remained convinced that the idea of Communism is the best idea ever, worth living for (despite his many years of imprisonment and even tortures by KGB); he understood it (I allow myself to paraphrase his words) as the free collaboration of free individuals who do not care about material gains, but are driven by the “fascination of the Universe that looks at itself through my own eyes”;
– Bartini said that he proved, but did not have time to verify the proof, that the amount of life in the universe is constant.

Just before his accidental death in 1974, he wrote a will, requesting to seal his papers until 2197 – the year when he would be 300 years old. It is unknown, whether his will was executed or not. Somebody saw a sealed envelope. I think KGB has collected all his papers. What did they do with them? Is there another idealistic genius working in the guts of Putin’s machine and supplying solutions that keep the country rolling? We might learn the answers a hundred years from now. Boy, I wish I could live long enough to learn the truth.

In Croatia, there is a city Rijeka that lists among its sons quite a few world distinguished people. Among them, two names stand out for me. One is Roberto Bartini and another – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who introduced the idea of creative flow and even a group flow – the form of creative cooperation. This melting pot in the middle of Europe probably facilitated in both of these two people the idea of sameness among very diverse nations.