Russian and Soviet Science

You're actually describing three phenomena that are important and I want to go over them. One, you're suggesting is that there was an institutional support by the Soviet government for science at that time. Obviously, this was the period of the Cold War. But you're also saying there was a fellowship within Soviet science among scientists, guiding students where they might go but also supporting them. Thirdly, you're saying that there was interaction internationally, that you benefited from those exchanges. Talk a little about those three things, because they came together very well in the former Soviet Union, didn't they?

Yes. I should like to say that -- in general, I should like to add something, that I was a very happy person because I came to the Ioffe Institute. It's one of the main, the most important condition, that you must work in a good research place. I think, for instance, Bell Telephone in the United States was a very good research center and plenty of Nobel Prizes were won by researchers from Bell. The same in Soviet Union. Practically all Nobel Prizes in physics, the winners of these Nobel Prizes were people from Lebedev Institute in Moscow and Ioffe Institute in Leningrad. So, it was a special atmosphere there.

But of course, about the international character, I should like to say a very simple thing which everyone knows: science is international by definition.

It's also very interesting that in our country, in Russia, the international scientific tradition has existed a very long time, and maybe by special reasons. Peter the Great was the founder of our Academy, and the Academy was founded in 1724. It's one of the oldest academies in Europe. Because of conditions in the country, Peter the Great decided to have the academy as a society of eminent scientists, academy as a research center with their own laboratories, and academy as educational center with university which belonged to the academy and gymnasium. [Eminent scientists] invited in the beginning to work in the Russian Academy [included] Daniel and Nikolai Bernoulli from Switzerland; Leonard Euler, also from there; then historian Miller, Botanes Gamellan, at very young age -- twenty, twenty-four, twenty-five. They became famous later in Russia.

But from the beginning, the Russian Academy of Science became internationally known, with international ties, with an international character. It was practically a tradition of the Russian Academy during the whole time, [to have] international [ties], of course. There was some intermission just after the war when it started the nuclear weapons project in our country, and government took great care to keep the secrets. But for instance, immediately when the project was finished, we started again and our institute was very well known before the war, and practically Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg, Joliot-Curie, they all visited our institute, and also our young scientists know them.

Academician Ioffe as a scientist was very good, but he was genius at organizing science in Soviet conditions especially. He was a person who understand very well from the beginning the importance of the unity of science and education. He founded our institute in 1918 during the civil war. The next year, he founded the physical mechanical department of the Polytechnical Institute which was maybe one of the first -- maybe even first -- faculty where it was combination of basic fundamental education in physics and mathematics together with engineering. He understood from the beginning of the twentieth century that physics is the foundation for new technology.

And even to this day, you, as Director at the St. Petersburg Center, are still building these contacts with the technical schools and with the gymnasium.

It was called the Peter the Great triad. So, we restored in our institute, at the Ioffe Institute, this triad.

When I became Director of the Institute in 1987, the same year we founded a special high school, Physical-Technical High School at the Institute, the last four years of the school. It's the only school in Russia which belongs not to the Ministry of Education but to the Academy of Sciences. We select young boys and girls at the age of approximately thirteen. We do not just require when you graduate from our school, you must go to our department at the technical university. No. They're young boys and girls, they like, for instance, after graduation from Physical-Technical school, they may like to study literature. Okay. But practically 50 percent of the boys and girls who graduate go to our Physical-Technical Department. And then many of the them afterwards go to work to the Institute. Even in this very hard time, when the prestige of science has declined in Russia, when the salary is very small, nevertheless, what I am usually saying, we "infected" them by science at a young age.

I am proud that I have this school. I am very proud that some of our school students go to the university, graduate, and return as a teacher to our school, as a teacher of different subject, not only physics. English, history. But they were going to this study in order to return to our school, to be again in this atmosphere.

Another very important thing, that it was a long-time idea but realization became possible only at the end of the nineties, is that we have a special building which we call the Scientific Educational Center, where under the same roof, school students, students of our faculty, and some laboratories [can come together]. I came to know, because I spent a lot of time as a professor, some chairs which were organized by me a long time ago, and they came to understand that the main authority for a boy or girl at the school is not a professor, not an academician. The main authority is the boy and girl a couple of years older who graduated from that, and when he graduated from our school, came to be student of our faculty, whom they meet and interact with practically every day, so they start to understand how interesting it is to be there, so when they finish the school, they go again to our faculty. When they finish the faculty, they go to work at the research staff of the Ioffe Institute -- if we would take them!

So, there's a passing of knowledge and a sense of the spirit of science.

Yes. There is just some kind of spirit that exists there. For me, because I am old enough, for me, right now, it's the best hours when I can spend time with, first of all, school students.

I know that you are not a politician but you are a man who runs a research organization, and I know that to protect science you are now serving in the Duma to make known to the politicians, the state, what science needs and what it has to do. That has changed over time, right? In the earlier period, during the Cold War, I believe I read that you were working on designs that were, for example, useful in submarines. So, there was an understanding of the role that science can play for the state and still be science. But has that changed a lot now with the fall of the Soviet Union?

Definitely. There are a lot of changes; there are, of course, a lot of positive changes, too. For instance, as for the international character [of the academy], to attend the conferences abroad, during the seventies and eighties you needed to get permission from fourteen offices. You must get fourteen "plus"; if one minus, it means minus for all. You can get plus from the first ten instances, but number eleven says no, so ...

No go.

It happened in my life, also, many times. For instance, my first international scientific work won the gold medal of the Franklin Institute here in the U.S., in '71. But I was not permitted to go to get the medal at a special ceremony in Philadelphia. So, the medal was sent by post. I got it on the post office and signed the paper that I got 40 grams of gold!

Right now, international [interaction] is no problem in principle. It's a problem of money, maybe, but what is very important [is that in the past,] we scientists, physicists and other specialties also, we felt that our country needed us. The science was requested. There were different reasons for that. Of course, military goals, also, and military industry, but it's also the industry was developed in the Soviet Union.

In the earlier period?

Yes. High technology and the high technology economy needed science always. The situation is, from some point of view, in different times of course, there is some analogy between U.S. and Soviet Union. U.S.: Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean -- for [many years] it took a long time to travel, so you must develop everything in your country due to this reason. In the Soviet Union there was Iron Curtain, and you must also, due to this political reason, develop everything in your country. So in spite of any other thing, the Soviet government always paid very high attention to science. The scientific [community was] working and felt always that it was important for our country, important for our society, and it was not only just prestige but that we understand that we're a part of the development of our country.

Right now is a feeling that the international scientific community needs us. Sometimes I am thinking that the international scientific community worries about how to save Russian science even much more than our bureaucracy and our government. From this there is not only a financial problem. This is [also] some kind of psychological problem.

There's a psychological problem which leads the Russian political leadership not to see the importance of science.

They always think about the importance, but practically the economy does not need scientific technological success right now, because the high tech industry is practically in a very heavy situation. So, by slogan, "you have been listened to always, it's important, we have some conception," and so on. In practice, no. What is even more important right now that they are considering dividing basic and applied research in the academy and not paying from the state budget for applied research at all. It's full stupidity because -- okay, there is some level of applied research when it became just the production. But in principle, one came from another one. There exists science and application of science. Applied research always needs state support too, and budget support too, because the companies start to pay a little bit later, when they look just for profit; but the main investor is always in the United States, [which is] independent from the system. Capitalistic, socialistic, the main investor for scientific development is the state, because the state can wait longer than a company.

You believe strongly -- I've heard you say this, and I've read things that you've written -- that this interaction between the theory and the work in the lab is absolutely essential to do science, because both sides learn from the other.

Yes, of course. I also was always saying that why I am so happy to work at the Ioffe Institute, because sometimes you need to speak with theoreticians, to discuss something, to get some new knowledge. You don't need to go anywhere. You just came to the corridor, sit down like you and me, and start to discuss the problem. And of course, what is always the spirit of our main institution, Ioffe Institute, Lebedev Institute, Simoniv Institute, is a very big openness. We never hide something from our colleagues. We just discuss that. Problems of priority very seldom appear because usually it was the atmosphere where people know who propose the first. Because for scientists it's very, very important, the priority for us in majority cases, much more important than money.

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