`The Soviet Brain Drain Is The U.S. Brain Gain'

At age 36, physicist Roald Z. Sagdeev became the youngest per son to be named a full member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, a top scientific accolade. Five years later, he became head of the prestigious Institute of Space Research in Moscow. There, he launched planetary missions and managed a staff of 4,000 of the country's rising scientific stars.

In 1990, as the superpowers mended fences, he married Susan E. Eisenhower, granddaughter of the former U. S. President. "For me," he jokes, "it was not just the end of the cold war, it was the beginning of global warming." Now, the 58-year-old Sagdeev is using his brainpower in the U. S. Although he remains a Soviet citizen with strong links to his former institute, Sagdeev has a permanent position as a distinguished professor of physics at the University of Maryland, where he conducts research in chaos theory. "Soviet science," he laments, "is a kind of endangered species."