If someone has by any chance looked at all the writings published under the name of Madis Kõiv - articles on theoretical physics, philosophical treatises, literary essays, books of stories and plays - these could at first sight seem so totally different that they could hardly have been written by the same man. A more attentive reading, however, uncovers the fact that they form a whole, supported by the fact that, for nearly forty years, the main occupation of Madis Kõiv was theoretical basic research in physics and mathematics.

Madis Kõiv studied at Tartu University between 1948 and 1953. These dates tell one in the know quite a lot. Firstly, studying the humanities was not without complications - only those students were accepted whose families were considered sufficiently loyal, and whatever was taught inevitably contained, both openly and implicitly, coarse political propaganda. Had times been different, perhaps Madis Kõiv would have preferred philosophy or literature, and not physics. His first choice was not actually physics but mathematics, but the Dean of Mathematics-Natural Sciences, Anatoli Mitt, had told him: you'd better study physics, you will get everything the mathematicians get, plus physics. This seemed sensible, and in 1953 Madis Kõiv was issued a diploma as a theoretical physicist.

At first he planned to continue his degree studies at the University, but for some vague reason he was denied the opportunity at the last moment and sent to the Tallinn Polytechnic Institute to teach physics. There he stayed for eight long years. The years were long in the sense that they were full. In every person's life, the younger years, from twenty-three to thirty one, are packed. It is difficult to overestimate the significance of that period for the future. These are the years to accumulate habits.

The head of the physics faculty was then Albrecht Altma, and Georg Mets was docent. Both had had the opportunity to further their education in Germany - Altma at the Munich Technical University in 1936-1938 and Mets at Leipzig University in 1936-1937. Therefore, as a European science Kinderstube, Georg Mets reigned in the faculty because his participation in Leipzig in Werner Heisenberg's seminars provided him with a special aura, not diminished by the fact that the status of a theoretical physicist did not actually interest him (letter of 15.05.1937: "I can't be bothered to become a real theoretician."). Upon his return to Estonia he did not resume his position at Tartu University, but began work at the Tallinn Technical University, where he stayed until retirement.

TTU thus lived under the aura of Leipzig and Werner Heisenberg, although his everyday work constituted teaching basic physics to first year students, explaining tasks and carrying out simpler practical research. The number of students was considerable, and they all had to be supervised and their work marked. This was Kõiv's main task during the first eight years of his working life: dictating words of wisdom and giving marks to students who were almost the same age as he was (due to the confusing post-war years, several students were actually older than their lecturer).

Teaching did not, however, fill up his days. Madis Kõiv started spending his free time at literary cafés. This, too, left its mark on his future activities.

By 1960 Madis Kõiv had completed his Russian-language thesis, "Systematics of mesons and hyperons and some (of its) applications". He was invited to Tartu, to the Institute of Physics and Astronomy of the Academy of Sciences, where Harry Õiglane was in the process of organising a work group to study the theory of elementary particles. Besides Õiglane, Madis Kõiv was the only person with an academic degree; all the others had just graduated from the university or were about to do so. As Õiglane was largely involved with administrative work, the essential work soon became Kõiv's responsibility. He started a weekly seminar and, as usual in these cases, when nobody wished to take the floor, Kõiv had to present a paper himself. This was not unpleasant for him, as the leading world physics magazines, from east and west, were available in the Institute's library. Besides, reading had been Kõiv's favourite past-time ever since his early childhood. Finding new and interesting topics for the work group from the literature, thinking them through and presenting them to the others became Madis Kõiv's chief activity. He never lingered over a task for long - when the core of the matter had been explained and a few colleagues had got some advice for calculations, Kõiv himself immediately took up a new challenge, in order to stay on the front lines.

The literature covering his specialty was by no means the only kind of reading Kõiv was fascinated by. Literary cafes in Tallinn were replaced by those in Tartu (Harry Õiglane played a part here as well); the most significant being the company of the dissident poetry innovator Artur Alliksaar. Alliksaar's poetry relied on associations of images, sound pictures and shifts in word meanings, all of which are non-logical means of constructing sentences. This was totally different from the strictly logical and mathematical structure of theoretical physics, but as a supplement to the latter it was particularly attractive to Madis Kõiv, who wanted to master the verbal world to the full, both its logical and non-logical sides.

The non-logical part was perhaps even closer to him: from his early childhood on he had frequent and vividly remembered dreams, which he wrote down. Quite a few of these writings were later published as literary miniatures or tales. As with dreams, he perfectly remembered the films seen during his school days, especially German and American films, shown in the cinema of the small town of Valga in the 1930s. A dream is like cinema and cinema is like a dream - but why did the screen so rarely show the horror that was an almost nightly occurrence in dreams? Kõiv has sought an experience of horror that would equal his nightmares in many a horror movie, but has nearly never found it.

"Terror is not caused by monsters, made as frightening as possible, nor by shrieking females. Horror comes in a situation when you wait for horror, and the picture actually does not have to show anything special at all," he said. He has written several film scripts, of which two, "Georgics" and "Broken Sleep", have reached the screen. How these relate to Kõiv's own ideas of a good film, however, remains a secret, as he makes a point of never reading his published work, and never seeing his plays in theatres or the films made on the basis of his scripts.

Everything fictional he has ever written is the description of his own inner world - or so he claims - which is but indirectly connected with the reality of the outside world. And as he believes that he is only depicting his own imaginary pictures, he has felt free, especially in his plays, to play around with figures who come from free world outside, and make them act according to his own wishes. However, the passion to achieve a description that would be as true to life as possible makes quite a few elements from reality recognisable, and this may cause confusion amongst local viewers.

The characters of Madis Kõiv's plays include not only his local contemporaries, but also several great Europeans. He believes he knows in his imagination their spiritual and bodily movements so clearly that he dares to describe them: Leibniz, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Hölderlin, Beethoven.

Today, Madis Kõiv has abandoned physics for good and replaced mathematical calculations with the generation of verbal texts. Something of the earlier years has, however, still survived. Madis Kõiv has always valued reading and interpreting all kinds of texts. His papers have never been mere mechanical retellings - everything has been pondered, no matter what is being tackled, be it the theory of physics, philosophy, history of culture, music, literature or something else altogether.

The most intimate part of his creative work, however, comes from his own life and that of his family - a monumental research into memory, "Studia memoria", largely still unpublished.

Piret Kuusk (1947), a collegue of Madis Kõiv, has a doctorate in physics and mathematics. Presently Head of the Laboratory of Theoretical Physics at the Institute of Physics, research interests include supersymmetry, string cosmology, quantum gravity, philosophy of physics.