Some recollections about the old time relating to Gerasim Matveevich Eliashberg
Along with Lev Gor’kov Gerasim Matveevich was the first member of our Institute. Both of them were working in Chernogolovka in the Institute of Chemical Physics before the creation of the Insitute for Theoretical Physics in 1965. He already was PhD but not yet defended the second degree of Doctor of Science (Habilitation). Being deeply involved in studies of nonstationary phenomena in superconductors he was not to be in hurry with Dissertation. So, once in the beginning of 70-es that is half century ago, this was in Thursday – the day of regular theoretical Seminars in the Institute of Physical Problem, I was staying in the lobby where also were Sergei Iordanskii and Eliashberg. Suddenly, in the corridor there was appeared our director Khalat who came to Eliashberg and said: - Sima, if you will not present your Doctor’s Thesis within the month, I will fire you. Sima was a little embarassed but within a month the text of the Dissertation has been represented.
Soon after, Eliashberg together with Yura Bychkov and Ilya Privorotskii started teach in Moscow Physico-Technical Institute. This Institution, we call it Fiztech, is in Dolgoprudnyi – small town in Moscow region. To come there from Chernogolovka to the beginning of teaching at 9.00 AM was (and is) the real problem. So, three teachers from our Institute on the way to Dolgoprudnyi made the intermediate step. The teaching day was Saturday. They made a reservation in the hotel “Moscow” in the centrum of city to spend there the night from Friday to Saturday. It was the most prestigious hotel. Its usual clients were the regional communist party bosses. On the eve of weekend they leaved the hotel and there were plenty of empty rooms with reduced prices. Eliashberg and his friends usually ordered the luxurious appartments consisting from three rooms. In one of them, office room, there was large office table with several telephone apparatus of different colours black, white and red. All of them were on the same number.
The clients of this hotel should feel themselves in habitual environment of their own offices ...
Our senior colleagues have spent the cheerful evenings there.
Each of us is a complex person. In each of us one can find good and bad properties. It seems for me that a bad simply did not get along with Sima. He was absolutly generous person.
When he came to our family place our dog Jim always met him caressingly jumped around him whining happily, while he was completely indifferent to others who came, and to some did not even allow to touch any object in our apartment.
Sima has related to all people around him with the great care and and at the same time his attitude to himself was sometimes careless.
With his departure there was noticeably less kindness in our world.