Russian Academy of Sciences

Modern headquarters in Moscow.

The Russian Academy of Sciences (Russian: Росси́йская акаде́мия нау́к, Rossi'iskaya akade'miya nau'k, shortened to РАН, RAN) consists of the national academy of Russia and a network of scientific research institutes from across the Russian Federation as well as auxiliary scientific and social units like libraries, publishers and hospitals.

Headquartered in Moscow, the Academy is incorporated as a civil, self-governed, non-commercial organization^[1] chartered by the Government of Russia. It combines members of RAS (see below) and scientists employed by institutions.

Membership

There are three types of membership in the RAS: full members (academicians), corresponding members and foreign members. Academicians and corresponding members must be citizens of the Russian Federation when elected; however, some academicians and corresponding members had been elected before the collapse of the USSR and now are citizens of other countries. Members of RAS are elected based on their scientific contributions and election to membership is considered very prestigious.^[2] As of 2005-2007 there are just under 500 full members of the academy and a similar number of corresponding members.

Structure

The RAS consists of nine specialized scientific branches, three territorial branches and 14 regional scientific centres. The Academy has numerous councils, committees and commissions, organized for different purposes.^[3]

Territorial branches

Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences (SB RAS)

The Siberian Branch was established in 1957, with Mikhail Lavrentyev as founding chairman. Research centres are in Novosibirsk (Akademgorodok), Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Yakutsk, Ulan-Ude, Kemerovo, Tyumen and Omsk. As of 2005, the Branch employed over 33,000 employees, 58 of whom were members of the Academy.^[4]

Ural Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences (URAN)

The Ural Branch was established in 1932, with Aleksandr Fersman as its founding chairman. Research centres are in Yekaterinburg, Perm, Cheliabinsk, Izhevsk, Orenburg, Ufa and Syktyvkar. As of 2007, the Branch employed 3,600 scientists, 590 of whom were full professors, 31 full members and 58 corresponding members of the Academy.

Far East Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences (FEB RAS)

The Far East Branch includes the Primorsky Scientific Center in Vladivostok, the Amur Scientific Center in Blagoveschensk, the Khabarovsk Scientific Center, the Sakhalin Scientific Center in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, the Kamchatka Scientific Center in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and the North-Eastern Scientific Center in Magadan.^[5][6]

Regional centres

Academy of Sciences headquarters in Saint Petersburg on Universitetskaya Embankment.

• Kazan Science Centre
• Puschino Science Centre
• Samara Science Centre
• Saratov Science Centre
• Vladikavkaz Science Centre of RAN and Government of Northern Ossetia
• Dagestan Science Centre
• Kabardino-Balkarian Science Centre
• Karelian Science Centre
• Kola Science Centre
• Science Centre of RAN in Chernogovka
• St.Petersburg Science Centre
• Ufa Science Centre
• Southern Science Centre
• Troitsk Science Centre
• Perm Science Centre

Institutions

The Russian Academy of Sciences consists of a large number of research institutions, including:

• Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics
• Central Economic Mathematical Institute CEMI
• Dorodnicyn Computing Centre
• Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology
• Institute for System Programming
• Institute of Archaeology
• Institute of Biological Instrumentation
• Institute of Ecology and Evolution
• Institute of Gene Biology
• Institute of Silicate Chemistry
• Institute of High Current Electronics
• Institute of Linguistics
• Institute of Oriental Studies
• Institute of Philosophy
• Institute of Radio-engineering and Electronics
• Institute of State and Law
• Institute of the U.S.A. and Canada (ISKRAN)
• Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO)
• Institute of World Literature (Moscow)
• Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute
• Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics
• Komarov Botanical Institute
• Laser and Information Technology Institute
• Lebedev Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Engineering
• Lebedev Physical Institute
• Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics
• N.N. Miklukho-Maklai Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology
• Nesmeyanov Institute of Organoelement Chemistry
• Obukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics
• Paleontological Institute
• Program Systems Institute
• Prokhorov General Physics Institute
• Schmidt Institute of the Physics of the Earth
• Space Research Institute
• Shemyakin and Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry
• Special Astrophysical Observatory
• Steklov Institute of Mathematics
• Sukachev Institute of Forest
• Vingoradov Russian Language Institute
• Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry

Member institutions are linked by a dedicated Russian Space Science Internet (RSSI). The RSSI, starting with just 3 members, now has 3100 members, including 57 of the largest research institutions.

Russian universities and technical institutes are not under the purview of the RAS (they are subordinated to the Ministry of Education of Russian Federation), but a number of leading universities, such as Moscow University, St.Petersburg University, Novosibirsk University, or Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, make use of the staff and facilities of many institutes of RAS (as well as of others research institutions); the MIPT faculty refers to this arrangement as the "Phystech System".

Since 1933, the main scientific journal of the Soviet Academy of Sciences was the Proceedings of the USSR Academy of Sciences (Doklady Akademii Nauk SSSR); after 1992, it became simply Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences (Doklady Akademii Nauk).

Awards

The Academy gives a number of different prizes, medals, and awards:

• Demidov Prize
• Lomonosov Gold Medal
• Markov Prize
• Bogolyubov Gold Medal^[7]
• Pushkin Prize

History

Foundation

Original headquarters of the Imperial Academy of Sciences - the Kunstkammer in Saint Petersburg.

The Academy was founded in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great, inspired and advised by Gottfried Leibniz, and implemented in the Senate decree of January 28, 1724.^[1] It was originally called The Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences (Russian: Петербургская Академия наук). The name varied over the years, becoming The Imperial Academy of Arts and Sciences (Императорская Академия наук и художеств; 1747-1803), The Imperial Academy of Sciences (Императорская Академия Наук; 1803— 1836), and finally, The Imperial Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences (Императорская Санкт-Петербургская Академия Наук, from 1836 and until the end of the empire in 1917).

Among the foreign scholars invited to work at the academy were the mathematicians Leonhard Euler, Anders Lexell, Christian Goldbach, Georg Bernhard Bilfinger, Nicholas and Daniel Bernoulli, botanist Johann Georg Gmelin, embryologists Caspar Friedrich Wolff, astronomer and geographer Joseph-Nicolas Delisle, physicist Georg Wolfgang Kraft, and historian Gerhard Friedrich Müller.

Expeditions to explore remote parts of the country had Academy scientists as their leaders or most active participants. These included Vitus Bering's Second Kamchatka Expedition of 1733–43, expeditions to observe the 1769 transit of Venus from eight locations in Russian Empire, and Peter Simon Pallas's expeditions to Siberia.

The Russian Academy

A separate organization, called the Russian Academy (Академия Российская), was created in 1783 to work on the study of the Russian language. Presided over by Princess Ekaterina Dashkova (who at the same time was the Director of the Imperial Academy of Arts and Sciences, i.e., the country's "main" academy), the Russian Academy was engaged in compiling the six-volume Academic Dictionary of the Russian Language (1789-1794). The Russian Academy was merged into the Imperial Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1841.

USSR Academy of Sciences

In December 1917, Sergey Fedorovich Oldenburg, a leading ethnographer and political activist in the Kadet party met with Lenin to discuss the future of the Academy. They agreed that the expertise of the Academy would be applied to addressing questions of state construction, in return the Soviet regime would give the Academy financial and political support. By early 1918 it was agreed that the Academy would report to the Department of the Mobilisation of Scientific Forces of the People's Commissariat of Enlightening which replaced the Provisional Government's Ministry of Education.

In 1925 the Soviet government recognized the Russian Academy of Sciences as the "highest all-Union scientific institution" and renamed it the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. However starting in 1928 the Politburo started to interfere in the affairs of the Academy. By the summer of 1929, Yuri Petrovich Figatner headed a special government commission to investigate the academy and purge it of "counter-revolutionaries" turning it into a Marxist-Leninist organization. Figatner's commission originally included Sergey Oldenburg, but he was sacked for "obstructing the reconstruction of the Academy of Sciences. By the end of 1929 its had sacked 128 members of staff out of 960 with a further 520 supernumeraries from 830 also being dismissed. In the following year over 100 people (mainly scholars and humanists, including many historians) were charged in what is called the Academics' Case. Former Academicians such as G.S. Gabaev, A.A. Arnoldi, N.P. Antsiferov, had already been exiled or imprisoned, but were also put on trial. On 8 August 1931 the Collegium of Joint State Political Administration Board condemned 29 people, including S.V. Bakhrushin, V.N. Beneshevich, D.N. Egorov, Y.V. Gautier, N.V. Izmaylov, N.P. Likhachev, M.K. Lyubavsky, A.M. Mervart, Sergey Platonov, S.V. Rozhdestvensky, Yevgeny Tarle. In 1931 the Joint State Political Administration Board imposed another wave of punishments on research officers of various establishments of the Academy of Sciences, Russian Museum, Central Archives and others. This included A.A. Byalynitsky-Birulya, A.A. Dostoevsky, B.M. Engelgardt, N.S. Platonova, M.D. Priselkov, A.A. Putilov, S.V. Sigrist, F.F. Skribanovich, S.I. Tkhorzhevsky and A.I. Zaozersky). Some former Guards officers, who worked for the Academy of Sciences such as A.A. Kovanko and Y. A. Verzhbitsky, were executed by shooting. N.V. Raevsky, P.V. Wittenburg and D.N. Khalturin who had organized various expeditions, the priests A.V. Mitrotsky, M.V. Mitrotsky, and M.M. Girs (the church group), Professor E.B. Furman, Pastor A.F. Frishfeld (the German group) and F.I. Vityazev-Sedenko, S.S. Baranov-Galperson and E.G. Baranov-Galperson (the publishers group) were also punished.^[8]

Smaller commissions investigated institutions, thus the Commission for the Reorganisation of KIPS and the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography subjected these organisations to "socialist criticism".^[9]

In 1934 the Academy headquarters moved from Leningrad (formerly Saint Petersburg) to the Russian capital, Moscow, together with a number of academic institutes.

During the Cold War the Academy acted as the KGB's strategic think tank.^[10][11]

The USSR Academy of Sciences helped to establish national Academies of Sciences in all Soviet republics (with the exception of the Russian SFSR and the Ukrainian State), in many cases delegating prominent scientists to live and work in other republics. In case of Ukraine, its academy was formed by local Ukrainian scientists and prior to the occupation of the Ukrainian People's Republic by Bolsheviks. These academies were:

Post-Soviet period

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, by decree of the President of Russia of December 2, 1991, the institute once again became the Russian Academy of Sciences,^[1] inheriting all facilities of the USSR Academy of Sciences in the territory of Russia.

Presidents of the Saint Petersburg, USSR, and Russian Academies of Sciences

Еhe following persons occupied the position of the Academy's President (or, sometimes, Director):^[12][13]

• Laurentius Blumentrost (Лаврентий Лаврентьевич Блюментрост), 1725—1733
• Hermann-Karl von Keyserlingk (Герман Карл фон Кейзерлинг) 1733—1734
• Johann Albert von Korff (Иоганн Альбрехт Корф), 1734—1740
• Karl von Brevern (Карл фон Бреверн), 1740—1741
• (Post vacant, April 1741—October 1766)
• Count Kirill Razumovsky, 1746—1766 (nominally, till 1798)
• Count Vladimir Grigorievich Orlov (Владимир Григорьевич Орлов), 1766—1774 (Director)^[14]
• Aleksey Rzhevsky (Алексей Андреевич Ржевский), 1771—1773 (Director)
• Sergey Domashnev (Сергей Герасимович Домашнев), 1775—1783 (Director)^[15]
• Princess Yekaterina Romanovna Vorontsova-Dashkova, 1783—1796 (Director; sent into de facto retirement in 1794. Simultaneously served as the President of the Russian Academy)^[16]
• Pavel Bakunin (Павел Петрович Бакунин), 1794—1796 (acting Director), 1796—1798 (Director). Simultaneously served as the President of the Russian Academy
• Ludwig Heinrich von Nicolai, 1798–1803
• Nikolay Nikolayevich Novosiltsev, 1803—1810
• (Post vacant, April 1810–Jan 1818)
• Count Sergey Uvarov, 1818–1855
• Dmitry Bludov (Дмитрий Николаевич Блудов), 1855–1864
• Fyodor Petrovich Litke, 1864–1882
• Count Dmitry Tolstoy, 1882–1889
• Grand Duke Constantine Constantinovich of Russia, 1889–1915
• (Post vacant, June 1915–May 1917)
• Alexander Karpinsky, 1917–1936
• Vladimir Leontyevich Komarov, 1936–1945
• Sergey Ivanovich Vavilov, 1945–1951
• Alexander Nesmeyanov, 1951–1961
• Mstislav Keldysh, 1961–1975
• Anatoly Petrovich Alexandrov, 1975–1986
• Gury Marchuk, 1986–1991
• Yury Osipov, since 1991

Nobel Prize laureates affiliated with the Academy

• Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, medicine, 1904
• Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov, medicine, 1908
• Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin, literature, 1933
• Nikolay Nikolayevich Semyonov, chemistry, 1956
• Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm, physics, 1958
• Ilya Mikhailovich Frank, physics, 1958
• Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov, physics, 1958
• Lev Davidovich Landau, physics, 1962
• Nikolay Gennadiyevich Basov, physics, 1964
• Aleksandr Mikhailovich Prokhorov, physics, 1964
• Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov, literature, 1965
• Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, literature, 1970
• Leonid Vitaliyevich Kantorovich, economics, 1975
• Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov, peace, 1975
• Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa, physics, 1978
• Zhores Ivanovich Alferov, physics, 2000
• Alexei Alexeyevich Abrikosov, physics, 2003
• Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg, physics, 2003

See also

• Akademgorodok
• Pushchino Radio Astronomy Observatory
• Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences
• In the 1950s and 1960s Prof. Lev Davidovich Belkind has released a number of books on the unique contribution of Russian scientists and engineers to the technological progress.
• Timeline of Russian inventions and technology records
• List of Russian inventors
• List of Russian explorers

References

External links

• RAS website
• Website of RAS management
• RAS Institutes in the Ranking Web of Research Centers
• Russian Space Science Internet Network
• Open letter to the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir V. Putin from the Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences
• Satellite photo of the RAS Main Building
• Satellite photo of the RAS Old Building