Science in Culture

book reviews of Sciences. The author of the essay on Vino- also worked in mathematics and ecology, there are no name or subject indexes and no gradsky, G. A. Zavarzin, claims that he “con- the mathematician Dmitry P. Ryabushinsky bibliography. Only some of the authors indi- tinued to take an interest in scientific life in and Chichibabin, who all emigrated to cate the sources from which they obtained Soviet Russia”, which meant maintaining France. Also profiled here are geneticist and their materials. These materials would be friendly relations with the bosses of Soviet evolutionist Theodosius G. Dobzhansky, useful not only to researchers of Russian science, in contrast to other Russian émigrés. mathematician Yakov (Jacob) Tamarkin, history, but also to show more fully how the But this singling out of Vinogradsky is per- engineer Stepan P. Timoshenko and Ipatiev. history of Russia was viewed in the West. haps unjustified. As the other essays in this The final section is devoted to biographies Nevertheless, this book is the first work in book show, most émigré scientists remained of eminent specialists in the fields of econ- which the lives and activities of representa- Russian patriots and helped many of their omics and the humanities: the Nobel laureate tives of those who achieved significant friends who remained in the USSR. They Vasily Leontiev, the historians Rostovtsev, success during their lives outside Russia are simply could not reconcile themselves with Georgiy Vernadsky and Pavel Milyukov, and discussed without any political subtext. the morals and behaviour of the communists. the philologist Roman Yakobson, a Harvard Although it is primarily addressed to a They condemned the repressions and terror University professor who had great influence Russian audience, it would be good to see it in their motherland, and tried to avoid the in many fields of the humanities. translated into European languages. I retribution of the Bolshevik hangmen. The book is full of detailed descriptions of Valery N. Soyfer is in the Laboratory of Molecular Other Russian émigrés featured include the degrees, prizes and awards bestowed on Genetics, George Mason University, Fairfax, Vladimir A. Kostitsyn, an astrophysicist who the subjects of the essays, but unfortunately Virginia 22030, USA. Science in culture

Shingu’s showers The 11.2-metre central column of Shingu’s insights and constructional skill, Shingu is Technology and nature at Fiat’s Lingotto factory Locus of Rain consists of a hollow tube from involved in a quest to ensnare the patterns in Turin. which a water spray spouts high into the air. underlying the variousness of nature in motion. Martin Kemp Around this revolve a series of arms, trumpet- Many a scientist will share the motivation behind On the face of it, there seems to be something shaped vessels and counterweights. Each of the this quest. incompatible between high-tech components in two units on either side of the axis revolve in Martin Kemp is in the Department of the gleaming metal, obviously precision-engineered, vertical planes around three pivots, the first on History of Art, University of Oxford, and an insistence upon a total harmony with their shared axle, the second at the point where Oxford OX1 2BE, UK. nature in all its living complexity. But any the lateral arms intersect with the poles that incompatibility is triumphantly dissolved by the support the ‘trumpets’, and the third in the necks kinetic sculpture of Susumu Shingu, the Japanese of trumpets themselves. constructor of devices driven by natural forces. The ensemble is driven by water that falls into His large-scale constructions grace public the trumpets, affecting not only their own spaces throughout the world, including Queens rotation, but those of the poles that support them Criminal Court in New York and the New and the primary arms. Each mouth drinks from England Aquarium in Boston. His travelling the spray when it swings towards the vertical, and installations of sculptures, Windcircus, which turns gracefully aside as it becomes replete. toured urban sites in the late 1980s, and Wind Sometimes it will swing out of the nourishing Caravan, which was encamped in stunning spray before it is full, pulled away by the natural locations in Japan, New Zealand, Finland, accumulating weight of water in the other Morocco, Mongolia and Brazil during 2000 and trumpets. At other times, it will spin gently to 2001, are at once forceful and light, strong and disgorge into the pool below. Sometimes, two elegant, large and delicate — evoking the power trumpets spill their waters almost and sensitivity inherent in natural systems. simultaneously. At others, one performs its There could be no more telling context for climactic act alone before rising to drink again. him than Fiat’s classic Lingotto factory in Turin, Watching the hypnotic effect of the planetary Italy, one of the paradigmatic structures of the cycles and epicycles is like witnessing a ballet modern era. Built to the master-plan of engineer choreographed according to nature’s own laws of Giacomo Mattè Trucco, starting in 1916, it is a complexity. Compared to that classic of chaotic great hollow rectangle 500 metres long. High on motion, the coupled pendulum, the variables are its roof is an automobile test-track with parabolic multiple, combining the unpredictability of the banking. Having reluctantly abandoned it as a water spout — both in itself and as affected by manufacturing base in 1982, Fiat has the breeze —with the interactive ensemble of the progressively brought new life into the great rotating components. The two rotational space. Now, with the recent opening of the ensembles work according to the same Giovanni and Marella Agnelli Art Gallery in a principles, as we can intuitively sense, yet they ‘pod’ extruded from the roof, the rehabilitation is never perfectly repeat the same phase, either in complete. Renzo Piano — who came to world themselves or in concert. prominence when he and Richard Rogers won The design is uncompromisingly abstract. the design competition for the Pompidou Centre Yet there is an elusive feeling of things in Paris — is the architectural mastermind, and it remembered from nature — of fish rising to the was at his instigation that Shingu was invited to surface to gulp air, of elegant water birds Susumu Shingu’s Locus of Rain, located at Fiat’s provide a water sculpture to stand in front of one drinking at a waterfall, of flowers dipping their Lingotto factory in Turin, Italy. of the building’s long facades. heads in the wind and rain. Through his artistic