"Here came people who would rather be with each other than anywhere else, who couldn't stand any kind of Sunday, because they were bored on Sunday. They were magi, Men with a capital M, and their motto was "Monday begins on Saturday." True, they knew an incantation or two, knew how to turn water into wine, and any one of them would not find it difficult to feed a thousand with five loaves. But they were not magi for that. That was chaff, outer tinsel. They were magi because they had tremendous knowledge, so much indeed that quantity had finally been transmuted into quality, and they had come into a different relationship with the world than ordinary people. They worked in an Institute that was dedicated above all to the problems of human happiness and the meaning of human life, and even among them, not one knew exactly what was happiness and what precisely was the meaning of life. So they took it as a working hypothesis that happiness lay in gaining perpetually new insights into the unknown and the meaning of life was to be found in the same process."

"Monday begins on Saturday" – a fantastic novel by Russian writers Boris and Arkady Strugatsky (1965), in which the authors talk about the "Scientific Research Institute of Sorcery and Wizardry", where magicians and wizards explore the universe and try to find the key to the happiness of mankind.

It seems to me that the representation of scientists as magicians, beings with inaccessible knowledge and abilities remains relevant to this day. Indeed, the modern person is increasingly rejecting traditional religion, and belief in the mystic, while replacing such a worldview with rationalism and declaring "I believe in science." But is it make such a big difference, really? After all, the average person often does not understand the principles of scientific work, does not delve into the details, and is surprised by the results as if he was shown a magic trick. And as a result, people of science are seen as carriers of sacred knowledge, as magicians and wizards – mythical heroes who know the laws of the universe and open them to us all.

During the times of the Soviet Union, the government relied heavily on scientific discoveries and progress in this direction; Institutes received good funding, and scientists – relatively high salaries. Shemyakin-Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, which is still functioning, is a vivid example of this Soviet legacy. It was built in Moscow in the 1970s and somehow managed to save its retro-futuristic interiors till our time. Moreover, people working there managed to maintain certain internal traditions from soviet times such as amateur performances on special occasions like New Years or The 1st of May. For these performances, an initiative group of colleagues has been making specific costumes of different characters for years, and I've got access to its storage. Using these costumes I transformed the young scientists into fairytale heroes who do wonders beyond time.