Obituary of Stanislav Dukhin

     I am very lucky to have Stanislav Dukhin as my father. And it is not about his being a famous scientist. For me personally it is much more important that he is a man of commitment. Life has taught me many times that it is a rather rare quality between us humans. We tend to adjust our commitments to our temptations, and we can be very elaborate in justifying these adjustments for others and ourselves.

     My father has had temptations in his life, plenty of them. But he always managed to find strength and to stop before breaking his essential commitments. That is what I respect most in him. For instance, in the late 1970's the communists allowed him for the first time to go to a Western country, The Netherlands. It was very tempting for him to stay there, to refuse to go back to the nightmare of the communist system. On the other side were my mother and I. We were kept as hostages ensuring his return. He could easily neglect us and find all kinds of justifications, importance of his contribution to science, for instance. I knew people who made such decisions and left families suffering behind. He did not. He did not break his commitment to my mother and me.

     It is very hard to follow commitments; they restrict our life, our choices, and our freedom. That is why it is so important to be very careful with selecting ones. The secret is to make fewer commitments but stay strong with them. In my father’s life I know only two real commitments he obeyed. The first one I mentioned above: towards my mother and me. The second one is for Colloid Science. He made this commitment not in terms of simply making a career. In fact, he refused to become a member of the Communist Party, which would have opened an easier career path. He chose the much harder way of being a scientist, not a bureaucrat.

     His work was his life. He spent all his time including weekends working. To some extent he is forced by circumstances, he has to rebuild his reputation in a new country. It is not easy at the age of 65 when he arrives in the USA, but he has succeeded. He worked at the Polytechnic University of New Jersey till age of 75 applying his enormous scientific experience to various practical problems, like the removal of zinc ions in the purification of water, preventing AIDs virus penetration into the human body, intensifying water-cooling, and many others. Then he worked as consultant to several companies till age of 85.  

     He suggested the bad circumstances as the main reason of his workaholic behavior. But I do not believe it. I think he loved it; he loved Colloid Science and loved to spend time with its different mysteries. Without this love he would not be able to achieve what he has achieved.

     He was the only one man during last decades (as far as I know) who had his name assigned to a specific number plying important role in science. Professor J.Lyklema introduced a “Dukhin number” as independent property of the Double Layer and Electrokinetic Phenomena (see “Fundamentals of Interface and Colloid Science” by J.Lyklema, Academic Press, 2000”). There are not many personal name numbers in Colloid Science: Debye length; Hamaker constant; Faraday number; Reynolds number; Derjaguin approximation and perhaps a couple more. It is an outstanding honor to belong to this distinguished company of scientists.

     I think this says enough about his scientific achievements and will talk more about his personality. He might be arrogant, ignorant, very demanding. He was not easy to live with. For instance, he has become a theoretician to the very extreme and cannot even put a nail into the wall. My mother and I had to learn how to do it. And yet he has ability to attract people and to build collaboration.

     For instance, he established a strong school of Colloid Science in Kiev during the 60's, 70's and 80's. There are several very strong scientists who are still very active in Colloid Science. All these people have very strong egos, and it is not easy to foster communication and maintain them as a working group. My father somehow managed to do this for almost 30 years.

     This school was dispersed throughout the world after the collapse of the Soviet Union. I think that Colloid Science in general benefits from this because the knowledge created in Kiev is now spreading around the world. His students and colleagues work in Spain, Canada, Germany, Austria, Australia, the USA and many other places.

     Even during the time of the Soviet Union, when the country was practically closed and he was specifically limited in his traveling for being half-Jew, he still managed to develop a wide international collaboration.  His father was a Jew, and it was not a helpful ancestry in the Soviet Union. He worked in different periods of his life with scientist from Bulgaria, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, Norway, Spain and many others.

     A couple of personal details. At the age of 15, at the last grade of high school, he and a couple of his friends started an unauthorized organization to study Lenin's writings in which he criticized Stalin. It was at the time of Stalin’s repression, and everyone knew how dangerous it was to do anything against him. They were lucky that the KGB did not learn about their activities. They dissolved their organization a year later when they realized that the problem lies in the system, not in Stalin's personality. 

     He was denied access to the Department of Theoretical Physics at Kharkov University because of his views. Later he had an invitation from famous Prof. Lifshitz to start Ph.D. work, but the university official denied him this opportunity and instead sent him to the coalmines as an engineer. His initiative and creativity showed up even there as he created first air-dusts filters. A couple of years later he went to Moscow to meet Derjaruin and to get his opinion about these filters. Derjaguin liked him so much that he offered Ph.D. supervision. He made his first Ph.D. under Derjaguin's supervision while at the same time working on the coalmines and afterwards getting a better job at the Academia of Sciences.

     I am very lucky to have Stanislav Dukhin as my father.

     Andrei Dukhin, Son of Stanislav.