It is difficult to express and summarize in a few words so many memories and feelings on the personality of Alexander Evgenich Chudakov, and in particular, concerning myself, his impact on my scientific, and not only scientific, life.

I met him in 1975 thanks to his relations with Giuliana and Carlo Castagnoli, the leader of our group in Torino (and I like to remember all of them together here, as the persons that strongly contributed to my “growth”).

Professor Chudakov was an outstanding, very well known scientist, a “mostro sacro” we say in Italian (an expression that in spite of the specific words is very respectful, and is used as indication of high recognition!), for his works on satellites, gamma ray astronomy, high energy cosmic ray physics, and at that time he was constructing the more ambitious detector for neutrino and high energy cosmic ray studies in the Baksan valley.

When I was asked whether I would be interested in working with him, I was enthusiastic, but also worried and confused, and I was even more confused when he met me at the airport on my arrival in Moscow.

Later on, I met his family, and they became part of our life, and I like to remind the weekends spent in their dacha in the surroundings of Moscow.

We went together to the mountains, in the Caucasus and in the Alps; I appreciated him a lot as a skier… unfortunately, as a skier I was a disaster….

I have to say that our first personal connection was when we discovered that he was smoking the worse Russian cigarettes, and I smoked the worse Italian ones. This was probably our first common feeling (to be correct, I have to add that both of us stopped smoking sometimes later).

I knew him much better in the Baksan valley, walking in the evening with his dog (Pursch, if I remember correctly), talking about physics, but not only physics.

I had the feeling that he communicated what was, and I considered, a deeply Russian man, concerning tradition, culture, sense of life, together with a strong rationality and sense of reality. His views on the future where always deepen into the reality; speculations where far from him.

I was rather young; several times he repeated me that it is better to have a chicken in the pot rather than an eagle in the sky… it must be some Russian warning against too easy enthusiasms.

Concerning his reluctance to speculations, I like to remind an episode that we still remember as significant and, in some sense, amusing.

In occasion of one of my visits to Moscow, with other colleagues, we produced an idea about a possible interpretation of the cosmic ray anisotropy that was measured in the Baksan laboratory. He participated to the discussions, gave good suggestions, but he did not believe; of course it was a conjecture, quite difficult to prove. When we prepared a paper, he used his pencil as a dagger to cancel his name from the author list: we had to publish the paper just thanking him for his advices.

From scientific point of view he was always surprising.

He could face quite different arguments: physics (with a capability of interpreting ideas, and theories from the point of view of an experimentalist), mathematics, electronics, and mechanics.

He had a strong, spontaneous, feeling with nature, dimensions, the magnitudes of phenomena, in physics as well as in common day life. He could guess some figures, whether some explanation or hypothesis could be reasonable or not, just as an epidermic feeling. Sometimes I asked him how he could get a given result, and I went home trying to calculate, of course in very complicated way…

As many bright persons, he was not always “easy”: if something was not defined or he considered an approach as incorrect, or felt any possible mistake, he did not slacken his hold till problems where clarified.

And, I guess, many of us experienced such attitude different times!

Our scientific connections became weaker when I started working at the Gran Sasso Laboratories. Due to my new engagement, it was clear that I could not continue my involvement in Baksan (although I still do not know if I really succeeded to give any substantial contribution to their work…).

The discussions we had at that time were intense and stimulating, and we kept with him and his family very strong relations.

For me, as for many other peoples that worked with him, he was a guide (a true “maestro”) and marked a style and a method of work and application.

Even if we do not have stable and systematic connections, I am still in very friendly relations with a generation of researchers grown in such period in the Baksan laboratory, and when we meet we recognize a common feeling, and still, I believe, we have a kind of common approach.

I have to confess that I was never able to call him Alexander Evgenich, as I think I should have done, but I always called him Professor Chudakov. Therefore: “Thank you Alexander Evgenich”.

Gianni Navarra