Science In Moscow

Moscow is the center of science and higher education of Russia and is also an international hub of science. There have been milestone achievements of science in Russia (and the Soviet Union), especially in the areas of physics, chemistry, mathematics, the conquest of space, various technologies and medicine. However, the scientists and inventors often created in isolation and have become less known than their discoveries would justify. At the same time, there is no other city in the world that has so many memorials honoring scientists as Moscow. There is a caveat in that political considerations have often influenced who was remembered and who was not. This book presents statues, memorial plaques, and historical buildings. Not only celebrated excellences are mentioned, but also some of the greats that perished during the years of terror. The book is full of human drama and 750 photos illustrate the narrative. Science in Moscow follows Budapest Scientific and New York Scientific and is the third in the series about memorials of scientists in great cities of the world.

This second volume of “Progress in Photon Science – Recent Advances” presents the latest achievements made by world-leading researchers in Russia and Japan. Thanks to recent advances in light source technologies; detection techniques for photons, electrons, and charged particles; and imaging technologies, the frontiers of photon science are now being expanding rapidly. Readers will be introduced to the latest research efforts in this rapidly growing research field through topics covering bioimaging and biological photochemistry, atomic and molecular phenomena in laser fields, laser–plasma interaction, advanced spectroscopy, electron scattering in laser fields, photochemistry on novel materials, solid-state spectroscopy, photoexcitation dynamics of nanostructures and clusters, and light propagation.

In 1958 construction began on Akademgorodok, a scientific utopian community modeled after Francis Bacon's vision of a "New Atlantis." The city, carved out of a Siberian forest 2,500 miles east of Moscow, was formed by Soviet scientists with Khrushchev's full support. They believed that their rational science, liberated from ideological and economic constraints, would help their country surpass the West in all fields. In a lively history of this city, a symbol of de-Stalinization, Paul Josephson offers the most complete analysis available of the reasons behind the successes and failures of Soviet science--from advances in nuclear physics to politically induced setbacks in research on recombinant DNA. Josephson presents case studies of high energy physics, genetics, computer science, environmentalism, and social sciences. He reveals that persistent ideological interference by the Communist Party, financial uncertainties, and pressures to do big science endemic in the USSR contributed to the failure of Akademgorodok to live up to its promise. Still, a kind of openness reigned that presaged the glasnost of Gorbachev's administration decades later. The openness was rooted in the geographical and psychological distance from Moscow and in the informal culture of exchange intended to foster the creative impulse. Akademgorodok is still an important research center, having exposed physics, biology, sociology, economics, and computer science to new investigations, distinct in pace and scope from those performed elsewhere in the Soviet scientific establishment.

Peter Kapitza (1894-1984; awarded the Nobel Prize in 1978) was so much bigger than life, possessed so much force of personality and was at the same time so capable and productive that it is hardly surprising that he contributed to the vitality of English physics (he was active at Cambridge Univers

World-class science and technology developed in the Soviet Union during Stalin's dictatorial rule under conditions of political violence, lack of international contacts, and severe restrictions on the freedom of information. Stalin's Great Science: The Times and Adventures of Soviet Physicists is an invaluable book that investigates this paradoxical success by following the lives and work of Soviet scientists — including Nobel Prize-winning physicists Kapitza, Landau, and others — throughout the turmoil of wars, revolutions, and repression that characterized the first half of Russia's twentieth century.The book examines how scientists operated within the Soviet political order, communicated with Stalinist politicians, built a new system of research institutions, and conducted groundbreaking research under extraordinary circumstances. Some of their novel scientific ideas and theories reflected the influence of Soviet ideology and worldview and have since become accepted universally as fundamental concepts of contemporary science. In the process of making sense of the achievements of Soviet science, the book dismantles standard assumptions about the interaction between science, politics, and ideology, as well as many dominant stereotypes — mostly inherited from the Cold War — about Soviet history in general. Science and technology were not only granted unprecedented importance in Soviet society, but they also exerted a crucial formative influence on the Soviet political system itself. Unlike most previous studies, Stalin's Great Science recognizes the status of science as an essential element of the Soviet polity and explores the nature of a special relationship between experts (scientists and engineers) and communist politicians that enabled the initial rise of the Soviet state and its mature accomplishments, until the pact eroded in later years, undermining the communist regime from within.