I studied in a small Zakarpattia village, then – at the boarding school and Kyiv University. I received excellent grades in almost all subjects, except Historical Materialism – I got “good” for it. I showed myself well at Olympiads in Physics, so I took up Physics, and then gradually moved on to Biophysics and, finally, Genetics.
Perhaps one of my most well-known discoveries is the way in which it is possible to take plant cells, remove shells, and cross without traditional pistils and stamens. After this work, I became the second Soviet scientist to go on an on-job training in the German Federal Republic, making the breakthroughs of our scientists known around the world. And when I returned in a year and a half, the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine made a bold move – and I became the youngest academician in Ukrainian history.

Read more in the book “Буде тобі наука”.

I have always been an excellent student at school. And at the university I just hardly got the honours because I liked not all the subjects equally. I received “good” in Mathematics and Physics. Chemistry and Biology, of course, were graded “excellent”.
When I studied at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, there were only three professions in the diploma of Chemistry Faculty graduates: engineer, teacher or researcher. As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be an inventor – and my diploma clearly states: researcher. So, I had no particular career choice.

Read more in the book “Буде тобі наука”.

Since my childhood, I knew I wanted to be a scientist. Thanks to my parents, I went to the school specializing in Physics and Mathematics, where a very good teacher of Physics worked. He fascinated me with this science. Among other things, he told about “Kvant” magazine, which published assignments in Physics. I started to participate, won the magazine prize, went to the Olympiads. Therefore, there was no doubt: I always wanted to do Physics.
At school I was not equally good at all subjects: had satisfactory grades in Literature and Physical Education because I played truant – instead, I went to the Physicist’s class. Probably, it was because of the teachers: if they were not into their subject, then I was not interested in it. Only in Physics and Mathematics did I always get excellent grades. I hated the school literature curriculum with all these “images of someone” (though I read a lot of other books, for example, science fiction) and only after school, overcoming this hatred, I started to read the classics – and was absolutely delighted. And at university I already began to study excellently and graduated from it with honours.

Read more in the book “Буде тобі наука”.

I always studied well. I graduated from two universities: KPI (Faculty of Instrument Engineering) and Sumy State University (specialty Computer Science and Applied Mathematics). Physics, Maths, Electronics and Programming are the subjects I had no problems with. So, from my young age I realized that I could become an IT specialist.
Our developers are in demand in the world market, first of all because of the very good grounding that they get in Ukrainian universities. I cannot say that our specialized education is that good, but due to the profound background knowledge in mathematics and other related sciences, people quickly integrate, have certain outlook, can work in different fields and with different tasks.

Read more in the book “Буде тобі наука”.

I was good at school and finished it with a gold medal. I entered Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, which was not easy – the gold medal did not matter at all, I had to take all very difficult exams. However, in the first years of university I was somehow disappointed in Physics. Instead, I was fascinated by Biophysics – and first of all by the fact that physical methods can be used to study living biological objects. At that time, this sphere was developing very intensively. Before my eyes, new methods and approaches were emerging. Finally, I defended my thesis on the mechanisms of calcium signalling and their changes in the development and aging of a nerve cell. I was lucky as my scientific adviser was Platon Hryhorovych Kostiuk, a world-renowned neurophysiologist. A while back, he was friends with Nobel Prize winner John Eccles, worked at his laboratory in Australia. Among his friends and colleagues there were wonderful scientists who I got acquainted with being a postgraduate student because at Kyiv Institute of Physiology, where I was writing my thesis, we constantly held various international conferences and seminars.
Among them there are two more Nobel Prize winners, Bert Sakmann and Erwin Neher, who have been awarded for the “patch-clamp” method of studying ion channels. They borrowed the idea of this method from us because it was at our institute that the so-called dialysis of a nerve cell was first done. These were our scientists – Platon Kostiuk, Oleh Kryshtal and Mykola Pidoplichko – who for the first time succeeded in replacing the intracellular environment of a neuron with artificial one which made it possible to measure transmembrane currents and to understand more deeply the basic function of the neuron. The discovery of Ukrainian scientists was a powerful impetus for the development of neurophysiology.

Read more in the book “Буде тобі наука”.

To my embarrassment, I was an excellent student in all subjects, and in my school characteristics it was recorded: “He is equally good at natural and humanitarian subjects”. Now, probably, I am the only professor in Ukraine having postgraduate students who defended thesis and got PhD degree in both Semiconductor and Dielectric Physics and Translation Studies.
I can explain myself by the fact that good naturalists have always had broad humanitarian concerns. The classic examples are Planck and Einstein, who were great at music. And, let’s say, Heisenberg and Schrödinger took an active interest in Philosophy. There are many scientists of the kind among Ukrainian physicists. For some reason, physicists of a really high level are always interested in literature, music and art.

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At the lyceum I was not good at Biology and Computer Science at all, and once I even failed to pass a trimester exam in Physics. Although in the end I graduated from the Faculty of Physics with honors and paradoxically those fields are the main areas in which I currently work. I started at the Optics department, and I did not like it there, so I changed for Theoretical Physics, but everything there was too abstract. In the end, I found myself at Biophysics and got really inspired by this intersection of Biology and exact sciences. Moreover, the brain is the most interesting thing that exists. Even when you are in silence, in an absolutely dark, odourless room, your brain emits a huge amount of spontaneous electrical activity.
Now I am doing fundamental science. Among other things, together with my colleagues, we researched the mechanisms of Parkinson’s disease and Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, but I cannot say that we were looking for the ways to treat them. Our job is to find out the fundamental mechanisms of how it works, but there is a very long way to go between the understanding of an illness and its treatment.
It is possible that this knowledge will be applied only in a decade from now. So indeed we study clinical pathologies, but at a fundamental level.

Read more in the book “Буде тобі наука”.

I studied in several schools and finished 171 specializing in Mathematics. Later there was KPI (Kyiv Polytechnic Institute), the Department of Powder Metallurgy and Physical Chemistry, and I defended my doctoral thesis at the Institute for Problems in Materials Science of NASU. That was the end of my formal education, and I am continuing to study informally until now.
Chemistry has always been my favourite subject. This love guides me throughout my life and research. At that, I knew the subject best at school, and I even won prizes at the Republican Olympiads. With time, I showed less and less knowledge, instead, I got more degrees and awards. Although it is interesting to note that when we started studying Chemistry at school, I lacked a textbook. So I went to class, listened to everything and just memorized.

Read more in the book “Буде тобі наука”.

As a child I was very active in taking sports. So active that when I was in grade 10, I was transferred to the republican boarding school “Kyiv”, which I finished with gold medal. Then I played professionally in the first league of the USSR football championship and hardly ever studied. This is fairly typical of athletes: to be enrolled in the institutes, but do nothing there.

However, all the time, while I kicked the ball on the football field, I remembered my perpetual love of Physics and Mathematics and that only they kept my interest in all these goals and offsides. In the end, I took the plunge and left a very lucrative and promising career as a professional footballer. Instead, I entered Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv at the Faculty of Physics, graduating with honours. My further life journey was typical: postgraduate study, PhD defence, working as Assistant, Associate Professor, defence of the Doctoral thesis. And then I became the head of the Department of Quantum Field Theory. I do not regret spending part of my life playing football. Although one of the consequences of professional sports was health problems. However, this time gave me a lot of friends, hardened my sportsmanship, taught me how to sustain under kicks and consolidated my habit of reaching goals. Besides, in the early 1990s, when there were really hard times and many of my talented colleagues had to give up science, I played at the amateur level, which made it possible to earn some money and provide for my family. That is, I can say that I stayed in science owing to football. True science is an extremely interesting detective.

Read more in the book “Буде тобі наука”.