Science without borders

Acceptance of applications for the scholarships of the Royal Institute of Great Britain for mathematicians and theorfiziks from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus has been opened.

In 1703, Isaac Newton sent his book “Mathematical Principles of Naturfilosophy” as a gift to Peter I. In 1825, Alexander I already sent a silver cup he designed by the British chemist Humphrey Davi. In 1842, the Russian-metallurgist Pavel Anosov sent as a gift to Michael Faradeus Damasian steel.

In subsequent years, scientific contacts between Russia and Great Britain have grown out of mutual honor to close cooperation. Today, the London Institute of Mathematical Sciences, where the author of these lines works, opens up a new chapter of this tradition - in the form of ten new scholarships for Russian physicists and mathematicians.

Friendly relations between scientists of our countries go back to the early dawn of international scientific cooperation. Back in the 1660s, the Englishman Samuel Collins served as a personal doctor of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. Since the Russian Academy of Sciences was created in 1724, many of its members became foreign members of the London Royal Society, the British analogue of the Academy of Sciences. Royal society included many greatest figures of Russian science, such as Kruzenshtern, Chebyshev, Mendeleev, Mechnikov, Pavlov, Kapitsa, Kolmogorov, Landau, Arnold.

The London Royal Society was created to support British science, but it did not conduct scientific research directly within its walls. In contrast, the Royal Institute of Great Britain, founded in 1799, has not only supported science for more than two centuries, but also engaged in it right in the center of London. Professors of the Royal Institute, such as Davy and Faraday, worked and lived in it. Ten new chemical elements were discovered here, the principles of electromagnetism were formulated, a revolution began in low -temperature physics. Like royal society, the Royal Institute maintained numerous contacts with Russian science.

Chemist Dmitry Mendeleev, who left us the Mendeleev table, regularly attended the Royal Institute, conducting research there together with the scientific secretary of this institution Frederick Brahmwell. Physiologist Ivan Pavlov closely collaborated with two colleagues from the Royal Institute. When he died, one of them, Joseph Barcroft, published an obituary in Nature magazine, noting that Pavlov caused a sense of "deep veneration of everyone who was familiar with him." In the 1920s, Cristallographer Boris Orenkin worked at the Royal Institute along with the local professor William Bragg.

Our new Russian scholarships are given a unique opportunity to work in the walls literally saturated with the spirit of their great compatriots. The founder of scholarships, the London Institute of Mathematical Sciences, is located directly in the historical building of the Royal Institute - exactly where the above and other Russian scientists worked for centuries. In these walls, the dinner, the Davy Cup with the dagger Faradey, perhaps decorated tables, were arranged in these walls.

In the 1990s, at the end of the Cold War, Royal Society in order to attract Russian scientists to the UK launched the Capitz Styropendy program. One of the first laureates was the chemist Kirill Zamaraev, who again conducted his research directly at the Royal Institute. This program was named after the Russian physicist in Peter Kapitsa, the Nobel laureate, who also once was a foreign member of the royal society. This status enjoyed remarkable respect in the Soviet Union. Historians claim that Beria’s refusal to arrest Peter Kapitsa Stalin explained precisely the belonging of the latter to royal society.

Five of our scholarships are named after physicist Lev Landau. Five others have been established in honor of the mathematician Vladimir Arnold. We chose these two names as a sign of deep respect for their wonderful achievements and beliefs that the spirit of creativity in science knows no boundaries.

No one embodied this spirit better than Dmitry Mendeleev, who was in England 14 times. Speaking once at the Royal Institute, Mendeleev extolled the “glorious name” of Faradey. His dream was to collect Russian and British scientists together as a condition for “world development”.

Our scholarships are another step towards the implementation of this beautiful dream.

Thomas V. Hodgkinson, scientific observer
London Institute of Mathematical Sciences

Prestigious scholarships Arnoldu and Landau
Waiting for their laureates ( L Ims.ac.uk/arnold-fellowsps)