Akademgorodok

This article is about Akademgorodok in Novosibirsk, Russia. For "Akademgorodok"s in other cities, see Akademgorodok (disambiguation).
The Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics in Akademgorodok
Akademgorodok Airphoto

Akademgorodok (Russian: Академгородо́к, English: Academy Town), is a part of the Sovetsky District of the city of Novosibirsk, Russia, located 30 km south of the city center and about 10 km west of the Science town Koltsovo. It is the educational and scientific centre of Siberia.

It is surrounded by a birch and pine forest on the shore of the Ob Sea, an artificial reservoir on the river Ob. Formally it is a part of Novosibirsk city, and has never been a closed city.

Located within Akademgorodok is Novosibirsk State University, 35 research institutes, medical academy, apartment buildings and houses, and a variety of community amenities including stores, hotels, hospitals, restaurants and cafes, cinemas, clubs and libraries. The House of Scientists (Dom Uchyonykh), a social center of Akademgorodok, hosts a library containing 100,000 volumes — Russian classics, modern literature and also many American, British, French, German, Polish books and magazines. The House of Scientists also includes a picture gallery, lecture halls and a concert hall.

History

The House of Scientists is the cultural centre of Akademgorodok
Residential houses at Morskoy avenue

The town was founded in the 1950s under the auspices of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Academician Mikhail Alexeyevich Lavrentyev, a mechanician and mathematician, the first Chairman of the Siberian Division of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, played a prominent role in establishing Akademgorodok. At its peak, Akademgorodok was home to 65,000 scientists and their families, and was a privileged area to live in.

During the Soviet period (1961–1991), due to the peculiarity of the Soviet economic system, monetary rewards did not always translate into a higher standard of living. To offset this, a special compensation system was devised in Akademgorodok for its residents and leading scientists. For example, residents of Akademgorodok had access to special food ration distribution outlets (“stoly zakazov”) that provided, most of the time, an access to some basic subsidized foodstuffs, which were not always easily obtainable elsewhere. Scientists who had obtained a doctorate (a post-Ph.D. degree under the Russian system) were rewarded by the authorities with the special food delivery service ("doktorskiy zakaz”), which provided access to a wider selection of groceries than available to the general population; some of the scientists, despite being eligible, refused it on moral grounds. Full and corresponding members of the Academy of Sciences had access to still higher level of service ("akademicheskiy zakaz") and were eligible to live in single family residences (called "cottages"), considered luxurious by Soviet standards, as most of the population lived in apartments situated in nine- and four-story multi-apartment buildings.

Akademgorodok in the post-Soviet era

The collapse of the Soviet Union saw many scientists, including whole cadres of Russia's top minds in the physical and theoretical sciences, reduced to penury. Beginning in the mid-1990s, as economic reforms allowed private investment in Russia, Akademgorodok saw the beginnings of venture funding. In 1992, a software company called Novosoft was founded here, and its chief client was IBM. Around the same time CFT started, which specialize in banking and financial software. By 1997 private investment reached $10 million; by 2006 it was $150 million and climbing. Intel and Schlumberger have brought work to Akademgorodok, and other companies are following them into the area. Many scientists. including Lavrentyev's son, also named Mikhail and also an accomplished mathematician in his own right, were deeply involved in this renaissance. While still minuscule by the standards of other countries, the private venture effort in Akademgorodok has breathed new life into what was once one of the Soviet Union's premier scientific centers.[1]

The area is called Silicon Forest by some.[2][3]

List of research and education facilities in Akademgorodok

See also

References

  1. ↑ Fortune April 2, 2007.
  2. ↑ Russia’s Siberian High-Tech Haven, Wall Street Journal blog, March 19, 2007
  3. ↑ Tech in a very cold place: A former Soviet science center is a hotbed of software innovation., Fortune Magazine, by Brett Forrest, March 23, 2007

External links

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