“The temple of the science is a compound building. People and spiritual motives that have led them there are various. Many of them take to science out of a proud sense of their superior intellectual power; the science is their own special sport to which they look for vivid experience and the satisfaction of ambition. Many others are to be found in this temple who have offered the products of their brains on this altar for purely utilitarian purposes. Were an angel of the Lord to come to the temple and expelled those belonging to these two categories out, the assemblage would be seriously depleted. However, there would still be some people of both past and present times, left inside…”
These words of Albert Einstein were remembered to me, when an opportunity appeared to me to write some lines about Beniamin Egishevich Markarian – he would undoubtedly remain in the temple.
Usually, speaking about outstanding scientists, the motives of the scientific investigations are left aside, but the example of Markarian’s creative work shows how strongly the final results are defined by these motives. After all, Markarian’s most important work, the discovery of a class of galaxies, called later by his name, was based on a highly tiresome and delicate experiments, and if Markarian went to a compromise even with one of them, if he was satisfied by half-truth, his sky survey would not be a source for such a large number of interesting objects. This circumstance was especially clear afterwards, when surveys appeared, having goal to enlarge the results of the Markarian’s survey by means of other telescopes and receivers.
During 1966-1973, I have been working in the Byurakan Observatory and I was lucky to observe closely the separate stages of the program of investigations, carried out by Markarian and his pupils. This program continued directly his previous results, devoted to the detailed surface photometry of galaxies. Just at that time galaxies with unusual colors of their central regions attracted his attention. All they were bright, close to us objects, so the task of revealing of peculiar galaxies among faint objects arose naturally. One by one B.E.Markarian conducted test observations, changing the spectral dispersions, the sort of photographic emulsions, the exposure time and other conditions of the experiment, until he did not achieve the most effective technique, corresponding to the needed task. In this respect this work reminded the experiments of another great observer, Walter Baade, who succeeded to detect the faint stars in the Andromeda galaxy, and as a consequence to revise the scale of distances in the Universe. B.E.Markarian achieved that more than 10% of all objects from his lists be classified later as galaxies with active nuclei. However, it was rather difficult to distinguish objects in the photographic plates obtained with an objective prism, and each of his pupils comprehended this art during a few years.
To speak shortly, one can formulate the basic result of Markarian’s sky survey this way. He succeeded to fill a huge gap between the nearest galaxies with active nuclei (an attraction to which called V. Slifer at the beginning of the XX century, and which later studied K.Seyfert in details) and quasars – stellar-like objects with large redshifts, discovered by M.Schmidt at the beginning of 60s. The value of the redshift in the spectra of quasars gave birth to many theories on their origin, often highly extravagant ones, and only Markarian galaxies showed that we deal with a unite class of objects in their nature, observational manifestations of which are rather different.
Beniamin Egishevich was a very nice man as apparently so as by his way of thinking. Being rarely benevolent he responded sharply to the least falsity in his colleagues’ work. It could not be differently, as the well-known principle “You give to me, I give to you” does not fit in the relations of an artist with the Great Architect (J.Jeans, The Mysterious Universe, New York, 1948). B.E.Markarian was distinguished by a noble generous indifference to any rank. Few people know that he had not found time to get the Doctoral degree (probably, he was elected to the Armenian Academy of Sciences not to devaluate obviously this title). In the 70s and 80s B.E.Markarian was the most famous astronomer-observer all over the world and each observatory would be proud to have an honour to invite him, but B.E.Markarian did not travel anywhere, but indefatigably had been working on the new lists of his objects. Like an enriched ore his lists were the basis of many articles and dissertations.
Somehow I heard a remark of an old mechanic about an instrument, produced in the XIX century: “An honest work”. These words may be attributed to B.E.Markarian’s work quite as much.
Prof. Valery Yu. TEREBIZH
Crimean Astrophysical Observatory (CrAO), Ukraine