buildings outside the central block will be devoted to chemistry, physics, biology and administration. The departments of the humanities and social sciences will continue to be housed in the old University building near the Kremlin. With these new facilities, the Moscow University will be able to admit 5,000 students a year. The new university skyscraper which dominates the Moscow landscape is a symbol of pride of Moscovites in the Communist règime. We may take it as an indication of the importance that the Soviet state pays to scientific research and education. There is strong competition for the university graduates, and it is reported that heads of industrial and research organizations attend the final oral examination of the university students to assess the merits of the candidates and offer positions. The best students are encouraged to continue their scientific work for advanced degrees at the universities and research institutes. It is an established fact, though not widely recognized, that the Russians use women far more extensively than other countries in their industry, agriculture and professions; the number of women scientists in the U. S. S. R. is many times that in the United States, and the Soviet states has recognized that women seem to have aptitudes which fit them better than men for certain types of scientific research. A clear picture emerges from these facts about Soviet scientific and technological education. A larger and larger group of Soviet citizens is being given a scientific and technical education. Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, the education is sound in most fields. A new Soviet intelligentsia is being groomed to discharge the many technological tasks necessary for the advancement of a modern state. Scientific instruments can be bought and delivered overnight, but several years are required to build a scientific laboratory or an industrial plant; scientific and technological manpower is a product of decades. There is ample evidence that the Communist Party and the Soviet Government are aware of this factor of time, and they are doing their utmost to build up a large pool of highly trained scientific and technical personnel. Soviet science has its weaknesses also, as the fantastic story of the genetics controversy reveals. This is one of the greatest mistakes made by the Communist Party, and one that stems naturally from Communist ideology. Genetics, a science that has been developing rapidly during the last 40 years, deals with the way inherited characteristics of plants and animals are transmitted from one generation to another and also with the way the organisms change their inherited characteristics. We have learned in the last 30 years that inherited characteristics are transmitted through genes arranged in a definite order in chromosomes, which are threadlike materials often visible in the light microscope and particularly apparent in the electron microscope. A knowledge of heredity is important not only as a clue to the basic life processes but also has immediate practical applications, for example in the development of better livestock and crops of higher yield and viability. These are major considerations for a state like Russia, where food has never been plentiful. In the years following the Revolution, the Soviet Union had one of the best schools of genetics in the world. Its dynamic leader was Nicholas Ivanovich Vavilov, a scientist who had studied in his youth in England, had traveled widely on plant-collecting expeditions, and had many friends in Western scientific circles. Nicholas Vavilov was placed by Lenin at the head of the Institute of Genetics and of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Vavilov proceeded to organize genetics research on a sound scientific basis and to develop new strains for Soviet agriculture: his scientific reputation is attested by his inclusion among the 50 foreign scientists honored with a Foreign Membership by the Royal Society of London. For some unknown reason, Vavilov's relation with the government deteriorated. A new prophet of genetics, Trofim Lysenko, appeared on the Soviet scene and promised Russian agriculture fast results. His Marxist ideological verbiage and his highly questionable scientific methods and findings received the blessing of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The full story of the struggle between the genetics science of Nicholas Vavilov and the pseudoscience of Trofim Lysenko is too long to present here, but we may note that in the end Nicholas Vavilov was displaced from his scientific posts and disappeared to an unknown death. Sergei Ivanovich Vavilov, the physicist, was a bystander in his brother's dramatic exit and, as the president of the U. S. S. R. Academy of Sciences, had the rather uncomfortable task of proscribing the friends and the disciples of his brother. In the Grand Soviet Encyclopedia, of which Sergei Vavilov was the chief editor, there is no mention of Nicholas Vavilov. But though Lysenko triumphed, genetics died as a science in the Soviet Union. Michurinism, a pseudoscience derived from Lysenko's theories, dominates Soviet agriculture. Time alone will tell how much the present woes of Soviet farming can be ascribed to the fatal decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in imposing its ideology on the genetics branch of science. The Lysenko affair did not affect scientific and technological work that was obviously closely associated with the external security of the Soviet state. In the persons of Alexandrov, Kolmogorov, Khinchin, and Pontriagin, Soviet mathematics has scholars of the highest caliber. Soviet physics is outstanding in the three main branches of nuclear work, low temperature investigations, and in studies of the solid state. Wechsler proposed a novel method of accelerating nuclear particles almost at the same time that McMillan did in this country. Cherenkov discovered a luminous effect of rapidly moving nuclear particles that bears his name and is studied extensively all over the world. Zavoiski, using modern radar methods, discovered electron paramagnetism in solids. The Soviet school of the chemistry of radioactive substances is of long standing. The Soviet physical chemist Semenov laid the theoretical foundations for the theory of explosions and nuclear processes. Soviet chemists seem to be concentrating their activity in the more technological fields of plastics, metal manufacture. insecticides, dyes, and medicinals. Basic studies in the various branches of engineering are extensively reported in the Russian scientific journals. The geologists appear to be concentrating on exploration of the natural resources of the Soviet Union. Recently the various branches of the Academy and its institutes were called on to build canals, dams, and irrigation systems as part of "the grand plan to transform nature" more recently whittled down in order to permit greater emphasis on consumer goods. In short, we must not underrate the competence of Soviet scientists, nor ignore the fact that the Communist Party and the Soviet Government are spending large sums of money in building up laboratory facilities, encouraging scientific research and technical development and training personnel. This is a longrange program, successful completion of which will enhance the economic and military strength of the Soviet Union. The new leaders of Soviet science and engineering receive the best material comforts that the Soviet Union can offer. They will have increasing facilities for research and a large number of trained assistants. On the other hand, they will be wedded to an unsound philosophy of science which already has to its credit the death of the science of genetics in the Soviet Union; and the idealogy of the Party may strike again. But in the meantime a strong and highly organized system of science and technology is doing effective work. ENROLLMENTS IN COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES, 1955† Resident and extension enrollment in institutions of higher education, by State and institution: November 1955 [NOTE.-Asterisk indicates that data for institution have been estimated in whole or in part] Supplied by the Office of Education, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. |