A WIND of change is blowing through Russian science. After leading the world in the space race, the country’s scientific effort atrophied as research budgets evaporated in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse in the early 1990s. Rebuilding has been slow.
The re-election of Vladimir Putin as president has been greeted with tentative approval by many scientists, who are hopeful that his campaign promises to establish world-class research universities by 2020 and boost public funding of research will come to fruition. But it isn’t only scientists who are waiting for change. Improvements in national science could also bring more…
