Being a scientist is not easy. Becoming a scientist can be even more difficult. This is a responsible step, and not everyone will decide to take it. Especially when at first you dream of something a little different. Nikolai Egorovich Zhukovsky dreamed of following in his father’s footsteps and becoming an engineer. But through a series of doubts, trials, failures and one unexpected takeoff, he finally came to his true calling. He became a super-engineer - an indispensable mind that was so necessary in solving many problems in our lives. For example, how to fulfill a person's dream of soaring in the sky like a bird? And Zhukovsky found how to give us wings. The creation of the cradle of aerodynamics and aviation is his merit. He was also an excellent teacher and professor, captivating his students with him. The kindest heart and clear thought, capable of turning the most difficult task into a simple one, together with the incredible fortitude of a scientist who courageously withstood all the personal blows of fate, fascinated everyone in Zhukovsky, from the young minds of our country to other great scientists of the world. “Our path is the path of thought,” Martin Heidegger once said in his talk “The Question of Technology.” Zhukovsky's path is the path of his thoughts about nature, about life, about us.