Good, But Not as Good

Many U.S. and British scientists have visited Russia and come back with glowing accounts of Russian science. Nuclear Physicist Donald Hughes of Brookhaven National Laboratory, Long Island, makes a somewhat different minority report. Invited by the Russians, he spent two weeks in Russia last July, where he lectured on his specialty, neutron physics. He visited six laboratories in Moscow and one in Leningrad, talked through interpreters with many Russian scientists and had a good chance to examine their scientific apparatus.

His conclusion: the Russians tend to concentrate money and manpower on a few programs in applied science (e.g., Sputniks) that promise spectacular results and will be valuable as propaganda. Speaking for his own field only, he thinks they are behind the U.S. in basic, theoretical physics, the kind of work that produces practical results years from now. Their nuclear physics labs are not as good as U.S. labs and lack the fancier kinds of equipment.

According to Dr. Hughes, Russian scientists admit openly that the U.S. is ahead in basic physics research. They look up to U.S. physicists and use translations of U.S. textbooks in advanced nuclear physics. They reprint 10,000 to 15,000 copies of the Physical Review in English. Almost all Russian scientists have to know English, says Hughes, to keep up with science in English-speaking countries. He thinks that he was invited to lecture in Russia because the Russians knew that "they weren't doing too much, and wanted to do more."

"That doesn't mean," says Hughes, "that there aren't good Russian scientists. There are, but we have more. However, they're training more people, making their students spend longer hours at work, and putting more money into science than we are."

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