New Fellow of the CORE Academy in the Division of Natural Sciences, Professor Artem R. Oganov visits the Academy's new Office in Xinjiang (Urumqi) and delivers an Acceptance Speech regarding his reflections on "Life, Science, and Future of Science"
Part I —— Life
Oganov was born in 1975 in the Ukraine (USSR). After graduating from Moscow State University in 1997 with distinction, he moved to University College London (UK) for postgraduate studies. In 2022, He obtained a PhD degree in Crystallography from University College London and conducted a brief postdoctoral research at UCL. From 2003 to 2008, Oganov was a senior scientist at ETH (Zurich) and achieved Habilitation at ETH. While at ETH, he received the ETH Latsis Prize (2006), awarded by the Latsis Foundation to young scholars for outstanding independent research conducted at ETH Zurich, and the Medal of the European Mineralogical Union (2007).
(Habilitation is the highest university degree, above PhD, existing in many countries).
From 2008–2017, he was a professor at Stony Brook University (USA). During this period, he started labs in Russia (“Megagrant”) and China (“1000 talents plan”). In 2014, he returned to Russia, becoming a Professor at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology and receiving a distinguished professorship in 2024.
For his outstanding academic achievements, Oganov was elected a Member of Academia Europea in 2017, a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2020, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2020. He also received the Friendship Award from the Chinese Government in 2019 and met with Premier Li Keqiang and had dinner with Chairman Xi Jinping.
Oganov is active in the promotion of knowledge. His popular science book“Chemistry” has become a bestseller, winning multiple awards. At its foundation In 2023, he became the chairman of the Scientific Committee of the VYZOV Prize. (This top-level annual award is given for breakthroughs in fundamental and applied sciences and engineering).
As of 2024, Artem Oganov is proud to be a father of 4 children, a teacher of more than 20 Professors and Associate Professors, and an author of 345 papers and book chapters (Citation: >36800, h-index 89 in Google Scholar).
Part II —— Sciences
Oganov is a theoretical crystallographer, mineralogist, chemist, physicist, and materials scientist. His most important works are in the fields of computational materials discovery, in particular the effects of pressure on chemical bonding, and the state of matter at extreme conditions (e.g. inside the Earth and other planets). In this speech, Oganov describes his main scientific achievements and discoveries over his academic life.
(One of the studies published on Nature in 2001, "The elastic constants of MgSiO3 perovskite at pressures and temperatures of the Earth's mantle", shows that elastic properties of Earth’s minerals helped to decipher the thermal structure of the Earth. "The temperature anomalies in the Earth's mantle associated with thermal convection1 can be inferred from seismic tomography, provided that the elastic properties of mantle minerals are known as a function of temperature at mantle pressures. At present, however, such information is difficult to obtain directly through laboratory experiments. We have therefore taken advantage of recent advances in computer technology, and have performed finite-temperature ab initio molecular dynamics simulations2,3 of the elastic properties of MgSiO3 perovskite, the major mineral of the lower mantle, at relevant thermodynamic conditions. When combined with the results from tomographic images of the mantle, our results indicate that the lower mantle is either significantly anelastic4 or compositionally heterogeneous on large scales5. We found the temperature contrast between the coldest and hottest regions of the mantle, at a given depth, to be about 800 K at 1,000 km, 1,500 K at 2,000 km, and possibly over 2,000 K at the core-mantle boundary...")
Among the highlights are the discovery of the structure of a superhard phase of boron, gamma-B, transparent phase of sodium, new carbon allotrope, prediction of MgSiO3 post-perovskite and its stability in the Earth's mantle, prediction of other planet-forming minerals, prediction and synthesis of "forbidden" compounds (e.g., Na3Cl), the discovery of helium chemistry under pressure, and creation of borophene - a 2D-monolayer of boron atoms, with great promises for future technologies.
(One of the studies published on Phys. Rev. Lett. in 2022, "Ultrahigh-Pressure Magnesium Hydrosilicates as Reservoirs of Water in Early Earth": Prediction of the new high-pressure hydrous compound Mg2SiO5H2 has inspired a new hypothesis on the origin of the Earth's hydrosphere. "The origin of water on the Earth is a long-standing mystery, requiring a comprehensive search for hydrous compounds, stable at conditions of the deep Earth and made of Earth-abundant elements. Previous studies usually focused on the current range of pressure-temperature conditions in the Earth’s mantle and ignored a possible difference in the past, such as the stage of the core-mantle separation. Here, using ab initio evolutionary structure prediction, we find that only two magnesium hydrosilicate phases are stable at megabar pressures, 𝛼−Mg2SiO5H2 and 𝛽−Mg2SiO5H2, stable at 262–338 GPa and >338 GPa, respectively (all these pressures now lie within the Earth’s iron core). Both are superionic conductors with quasi-one-dimensional proton diffusion at relevant conditions. In the first 30 million years of Earth’s history, before the Earth’s core was formed, these must have existed in the Earth, hosting much of Earth’s water. As dense iron alloys segregated to form the Earth’s core, Mg2SiO5H2 phases decomposed and released water. Thus, now-extinct Mg2SiO5H2 phases have likely contributed in a major way to the evolution of our planet..."）
Oganov has developed novel and highly efficient methods of crystal structure prediction that became the basis of the USPEX code, which is used by more than 10000 researchers worldwide today. （USPEX (Universal Structure Predictor: Evolutionary Xtallography is a method developed by the Oganov laboratory since 2004. The problem of crystal structure prediction is very old and does, in fact, constitute the central problem of theoretical crystal chemistry. USPEX code solves this problem and allows to prediction of crystal structure with arbitrary P-T conditions by knowing only the chemical composition of the material. In addition to crystal structure prediction, USPEX can work in other dimensionalities and predict the structure of nanoparticles, polymers, surfaces, interfaces, and 2D crystals. It can very efficiently handle molecular crystals. Moreover, it can predict stable chemical compositions and corresponding crystal structures, given just the names of the chemical elements. In addition to this fully non-empirical search, USPEX allows one to predict also a large set of robust metastable structures and perform several types of simulations using various degrees of prior knowledge. USPEX can also be used for finding low-energy metastable phases, as well as stable structures of nanoparticles, surface reconstructions, molecular packings in organic crystals, and for searching for materials with desired physical (mechanical, electronic) properties.）
Oganov and colleagues have predicted and studied (theoretically and experimentally) a number of novel superconductors, which are among the highest-temperature superconductors known to date: ThH10 and ThH9, YH6, (La, Y)H6 and (La, Y)H10.
Oganov has proposed new scales of electronegativities and chemical hardnesses of the chemical elements, extended to high pressures. Oganov and colleagues were able to explain many unusual phenomena of high-pressure chemistry, as well as predict new phenomena and compounds.
(One of the studies published on the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022, "Electronegativity and chemical hardness of elements under pressure", redefined the notion of electronegativity to explain chemical phenomena at normal and high pressures.)
At the end of this section, Oganov outlines some of the applications of his scientific research in society and industry.
Computational methods developed by Oganov open up the way to the discovery of materials with desired properties, thus laying the foundation of computational materials discovery – a new booming field of science.
Part III —— Reflections on the Future of Science
In the last part of his speech, Oganov describes his concerns and personal reflections on the state of science and academia today. According to Artem Oganov, we now live in a world of global conflict — the global free market, fair competition (also for talents), free information, and unbiased reporting are rapidly disappearing thanks to political interference. Whole countries and their people might be considered enemies and scholars are viewed as spies.
In such unfair international competition, many scientists are persecuted and face unequal treatment (e.g. suicide of Zhang Shoucheng, and the cases of Chen Gang and Charles Lieber). Based on Oganov's personal experience, some international journals and conferences require participants to delete their Russian affiliation or they will not be allowed to contribute. More and more scientific Unions and learned societies are now becoming political tools.
Greed, arrogance, and insecurity are driving the world to World War III - according to Oganov, we are already largely in it.
"While there can be no collective responsibility, there is a personal responsibility for each thinking person, that is we should not let World War happen. Scientists and thinkers should appeal for peace, not war. What we need is platforms remaining above politics, unifying all scientists from all countries – Academies and learned societies, scientific journals, and conferences."
Artem Oganov gratefully accepted the fellowship of the Core Academy and is willing to contribute to its development, hoping that the Academy will become such a platform to appeal for peace and international scientific cooperation for the benefit of Humanity.
"Science should be free from politics, and knowledge belongs to humanity" —— Artem R. Oganov
References
1. Artem R. Oganov's Profile Page: https://coreacad.org/Member.aspx?ProId=126
2. "Start of nominations for the VYZOV Prize", Core Academy, 2024. https://coreacad.org/NewsDetail.aspx?ID=136
3. USPEX Computational Materials Discovery. https://uspex-team.org/en/uspex/overview
4. “The elastic constants of MgSiO3 perovskite at pressures and temperatures of the Earth's mantle”, Nature 2001. https://www.nature.com/articles/35082048
5. "Ultrahigh-Pressure Magnesium Hydrosilicates as Reservoirs of Water in Early Earth"， Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 2022. https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.035703