USSR Team for the XIX IPhO

Well, it was back in 1988. We are all in different places now.

The picture above is clickable.
Left to right: Olga Hammer, our interpreter ; Konstantin Penanen, Yuri Kravchenko, Alexander Mazurenko, Vadim Moroz, Anton Malkin.

Througout my college years at Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology I continued to be involved in the training of the Soviet (and then Russian) teams for the International Physics Olympiad. I think that the whole idea of young people getting together to solve challenging problems in the spirit of healthy competition is really great. Unfortunately, in the United States it gets substituted by the culture of extra-curriculum sports and cheerleading. Another obstacle is the differentiation in the level of science classes taken in different schools. It is a shame that it is possible to get a high school diploma without ever knowing that there is the Third Law of Thermodynamics and the photoeffect.

In April 1995, David Morin and myself with the support of the Harvard Physics Department organized the next best thing - Boston Area Undergraduate Physics Competition . It became an annual event.

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penanen@xra y.harvard.edu