Plot Summary

This story is told by academician S. Yuryshev, Director of the Institute of applied biochemistry. The events in it are developing in 20 years during the Civil war, when he sent a geologist searching for copper in the coal mines of the merchant Stasova, and in the 70s, when the head of the Institute. His thoughts and actions as if he reconciles his past, revolutionary romanticism 20-h his life's work was the discovery of a new chemical element. He believes in getting it even when the explosion in the laboratory takes the life of his closest friend and colleague, when his grown-up adopted son, becoming also a chemist, suffered during the experiments. Believe when testing on military ground again fail…