Roald Zinnurovich Sagdeev (Russian: Роальд Зиннурович Сагдеев, Tatar: Роальд Зиннур улы Сәгъдиев; born 26 December 1932) is a Russian expert in plasma physics and a former director of the Space Research Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences.[1] He was also a science advisor to the Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. Sagdeev graduated from Moscow State University. He is a member of both the Russian Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.[2] He has worked at the University of Maryland, College Park since 1989 in the University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences. He is also currently a senior advisor at the Albright Stonebridge Group, a global strategy firm, where he assists clients with issues involving Russia and countries in the former Soviet Union. Sagdeev was married to, and divorced from, Susan Eisenhower, granddaughter of Dwight D. Eisenhower.[3][4] Sagdeev was the recipient of the 2003 Carl Sagan Memorial Award, and the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics (2001).
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Roald Sagdeev is an ethnic Tatar. His maternal grandfather was a secular man teaching mathematics. He was born in Moscow on December 26, 1932, soon after the arrival of his young parents from Tatarstan. The family used to speak Russian at home. Nonetheless, the parents also communicated in Tatar between adults when secrecy was needed. He lived with them until the age of four near the Nikitsky Gates. His father was then a post-graduate student. He spent the following years in Kazan where he graduated from a high school. The young Roald was not only a quite outstanding student who was awarded the silver medal, but also champion of chess among juniors of his city. His brother Renad Zinnurovich Sagdeev (born December 13, 1941) would later study chemistry. Roald returned to Moscow to study at the Moscow State University. He was one of a few of Lev Landau's students, the Soviet Nobel laureate. In the dormitory he lived next to Mikhail Gorbachev, a law student, and Raisa Gorbachyova, a sociology student.
In 1968 a few dozens of Soviet citizens signed a number of letters addressed to the Soviet government in which the authors protested against human rights violations by the authorities in connection with the trials of Soviet dissidents. The authorities initiated repressions against the signatories, including those who worked at the research establishments of Akademgorodok in Novosibirsk. Then 36-year-old Sagdeev suggested that these persons should be dismissed from Akademgorodok and sent to "load chunks of lead". However, as it became evident later, Sagdeev took this position to protect the signatories by suggesting a lighter punishment, as they could have lost their jobs or even been exiled. [8]