10 world-famous Ukrainians in science and tech

What do you exactly know about Ukrainian scientists? Student Melaniya Podolyak who now studies abroad says it’s rather difficult to explain to foreign co-eds and friends that Ukraine and its scientists is a bright example of tech success, though they are thought to be a part of “Russian” or “post-USSR” culture and science.

«Some time ago, the topic of the Paris Air Show came up while I was hanging out with two American friends of mine. One of them takes particular interest in technology, engineering, and the like, so I asked him if he had yet seen the newest Ukrainian military plane AN-178, manufactured by “Antonov”. “Ukrainian? Isn’t  “Antonov” a Russian company?” I can’t say that his answer struck me as odd – I mean, being a Ukrainian among foreigners means these thing will occasionally happen — but getting rid of the nasty USSR legacy is tough» — says Malanka in her blog where she decided to make a list of scientists of Ukrainian origin. She remarks that there is no need to say things like “George Gamow was Ukrainian, and that’s final“, because technically it’s not right — he and many others (like Levchin from PayPal) were citizens of the Soviet Union born into Ukrainian families, later emigrated to the USA. Yet there are names which are worth mentioning, she adds.

We in our editorial team liked her list of scientists and we decided to show it to our readers — there are names which are not well-known not just abroad but in Ukraine itself as well.

George Gamow

1904 (Odessa, Ukraine) — 1968 (Boulder, CO, United States)

Gamow was a theoretical physicist and cosmologist — most notably, an early advocate and developer of Lemaître’s Big Bang theory. He discovered a theoretical explanation of alpha decay via quantum tunneling and worked on radioactive decay of the atomic nucleus, star formation, stellar nucleosynthesis, Big Bang nucleosynthesis, and molecular genetics. Some of his books are still in print more than half a century after their original publication and have become classic, yet ever-relevant introductions to the fundamental principles of mathematics and science. In his middle and late career, Gamow focused more on teaching, and became well known as an author of popular books on science, including One Two Three … Infinity, and the Mr. Tompkins … series of books. As an educator, Gamow recognized and emphasized fundamental principles that were unlikely to become obsolete, even as the pace of science and technology accelerated. He also conveyed a sense of excitement with the revolution in physics and other scientific topics of interest for the common reader.

Causative form

Если перевести конструкцию "слово в слово", получится: "Я имею мои волосы подстриженными каждый месяц". То есть, я не сам их стригу, а "имею их подстриженными", это делает кто-то другой.

Теперь, когда вам более-менее понятна суть конструкции, давайте рассмотрим еще примеры:

I check my eyes once a year. – Я проверяю сам, у меня есть оборудование, я знаю, как это делать.
I have my eyes checked once a year. – Я хожу к врачу-окулисту, который проверят мое зрение.
He repairs his car at this car service station. – Он ремонтирует машину своими руками.
He has his car repaired at this car service station. – Его машину ремонтируют автомеханики.

Два примера выше приведены во времени Present Simple: это привычные, повторяющиеся действия. Не забывайте, что глагол have меняется на has для третьего лица.

The Causative обычно используется с такими глаголами как build, clean, decorate, deliver, mend, copy, print, repair, service, test, cut, check и другими, подразумевающими, что действие выполняет кто-то другой, а не сам говорящий.

The Causative (have something done) состоит из трех частей. Все части этой конструкции изменяемые. Вместо done вы подставляете любой глагол в третьей форме, something – это object, предмет, над которым производится действие.  А have служит для изменения времени.
Некоторые учебники приводят такую формулу: have + object + Past Participle.

Давайте рассмотрим таблицу времен, в которых может использоваться данная конструкция, и сравним предложения в активном залоге и в The Causative:

My last visit to the theatre

Variant 1.

As for me I like theatre very much, especially, The Ivan Franko Ukrainian Drama Theatre.

 I like the traditional scenery, skill-made costumes. And, of course, it's very important what plays are in the repertoire. The Kyiv Ukrainian Drama Theatre always chooses the plays for its repertoire very thoroughly.

Sometimes it is very difficult to get tickets to the performance.

 I visited The Ukrainian Drama Theatre, where I saw the play "The Pious Martha" by the Spanish playwright Lope de Vega.

The leading parts in the performance were played by the well-known actors. Generally speaking this production has an excellent cast.

This time our seats were in the second row of the pit. Before the beginning of the performance we bought a bill.

There is a lot of music in this production. But what I especially enjoyed in this performance was the sense of humour which permeated the whole performance.

I consider it was one of the best performances I have seen this season.

SCIENCE

We are living in the modern world, full of computers, automatic devices, gadgets, cell phones and many other different interesting and useful things that technological progress has given us for usage. Although not even years have passed as we couldn’t even dream about time when it would be enough just to tap on a screen and get connected with the other person on the different end of the world.

Science has given us possibility to fly into space and step on the moon, to start studying different parts of our galaxy and even farther.  For example, what wonderful pictures of our galaxy and planets and stars surrounding Earth Hubble telescope has showed to us. Now we can develop further and maybe ever step on the other planets and even populate it.

Technology has considerably made our life easier due to different discoveries. For example, nowadays we can travel with extremely high speed in different directions: many countries have high-speed trains which help us to feel comfortable all the way.

Older people have different devices that have highly improved the level of their life, such as special cars for driving or hearing aid that helps them to no more feel useless in the society.

On the other hand al this computerized environment may damage us too. Our children spend more and more time playing computer games, texting their friends instead of meeting them in the streets, living more and more in their own virtual world. Girls try to compete whose cell phone or tablet is better and more modern, or who has more friends on Facebook.

Anyway technology has its advantages and disadvantages, but we cannot escape from progress, the development is inevitable. But our responsibility is to preserve ourselves as modern, just and peaceful civilization.

The Bears in the Bed and the Great Big Storm by Paul Bright

Читаем рассказ по ссылке:  The Bears in the Bed and the Great Storm