My Fifteen Years at IKI, the Space Research Institute: Position-Sensitive Detectors and Energetic Neutral Atoms Behind the Iron Curtain

About the book. This is a personal story of a young physicist in the Soviet Union, a country distinctly different from the Western world. Mike Gruntman worked primarily in space physics and on particle detectors and science instrumentation. He was among the early pioneers in the emerging field of imaging of space plasmas in fluxes of energetic neutral atoms (ENAs). Today, multiple space missions operate ENA imaging instruments.

The events in this book unfolded during the Cold War in the 1970s and 1980s. At that time, the Iron Curtain stood firmly in place during the epic struggle between the dark forces of communism and the free world. Gruntman describes the life and work of a scientist in the totalitarian Soviet Union, including elite education in physics and engineering, the disfunction and ideological control of a centrally planned state, collaboration with scientists abroad, and the impact of foreign radio broadcasts. These, and other glimpses into the realities of the Soviet past, serve not only as background to the story; they also inform us about the nature of neo-Marxism, which is gaining popularity in the free world today.

About the author. Mike Gruntman is a professor of astronautics and the founder of a space engineering program at the University of Southern California (USC). As a child, he grew up on the Tyuratam (Baikonur) missile range and space launch base and went on to graduate from the Moscow Physical-Technical Institute (Fiztekh) and become a research fellow at the leading space science institute in the USSR Academy of Sciences, the Space Research Institute (IKI). Mike joined USC in March 1990. He is an accomplished specialist actively involved in R&D programs in space science and space technology and has authored and co-authored more than 300 scholarly publications, including four books.