The article contains the author's personal recollections of two outstanding physicists of the twentieth century, A. F. loffe (1880--1960) and I. V. Kurchatov (1903--1960). The author was one of the first staff members of the A. F. loffe Physicotechnical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, at the beginning of his career, and he associated and worked a great deal with I. V. Kurchatov.