RUSSIA'S CONTRIBUTION TO SCIENCE 



^^■hile Russian literature, Russian music, Russian art and 

 Russian dance are fairly well known to the American people, 

 few realize the extent of Russia's contribution to science. This 

 is quite pardonable considering the lack of knowledge on the 

 part of the broad public of the ever growing achievements of 

 exact science in all its branches, regardless of nationality, and 

 taking into account also the difficulty of even casual acquaint- 

 ance with subjects which require special training. To this must 

 be added that a great deal of the work published by Russian 

 scientists has been written in foreign languages, mostly in Ger- 

 man and French periodical publications, while Russian publi- 

 cations are few and of these only one or two are known to 

 foreigners. 



In Russia itself education in general and science in particular 

 has been for a long time unpopular, has been limited to a com- 

 paratively small circle of people and has even at the present time 

 not yet penetrated into the broader masses. Purely clerical 

 knowledge of the Tsarist Russia gave way to military training 

 and to such education as was necessary for service in the bureau- 

 cratic institutions created by Peter the Great. Later humanistic 

 studies and law became the standard of good education and 

 dominated Russian society and Russian thought until compara- 

 tively recently. Medicine of course was early recognized as 

 necessary knowledge, yet the people regarded it in the light of 

 special knowledge rather detrimental to broad education. Ap- 

 plied science, such as engineering, was for a long time looked 

 upon in the same way with the additional stigma of mistrust. 

 Pure science has been looked upon rather as a hobby for men 

 with sufficient means, dangerous in as far as it inclined to pro- 

 duce a critical attitude toward religion and the established order 

 of things, undesirable inasmuch as it did not open any other 

 field for activity than an academic career, and insufficient as a 

 general basis for broad education. Yet in the second half of 

 the past century pure science came into its own, conquered the 

 opposition of society and furnished many a name looked upon 

 with esteem and even admiration in Russia and far beyond its 

 political frontiers. 



