Stages of the election of the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Last week, the nominations of candidates for president of the Russian Academy of Sciences at meetings of the bureaus of its branches were completed. This can be called the second stage: the first stage consists of self-nomination of candidates (only an academician can be a candidate). Five nominated: Zh.I.Alferov, E.N. Kablov, A.D. Nekipelov, Yu.S. Osipov, V.E. Fortov. In the second stage, these candidates are voted on by the branch bureaus: the winner becomes the nominee of that branch. The RAS has 11 sectoral branches and three regional ones. According to Rossiyskaya Gazeta ( http://www.rg.ru/2013/04/18/prezident-ran-site.html ), the results are as follows: Alferov was nominated by four branches, Kablov was nominated by none, he dropped out of the race , Osipov nominated one, Nekipelov - three, Fortov - seven branches.

Fortov was nominated by the departments of energy and mechanical engineering, physical sciences, chemistry, biology, the Far Eastern department, the Ural department, global problems and international relations. Alferov was nominated by the departments of St. Petersburg, Siberian, nanotechnology and computer science, physiology and fundamental medicine. Nekipelov was nominated by the departments of geosciences, social sciences, and historical and philological sciences. Osipov was nominated by the Department of Mathematics.

Now briefly about the candidates. Alferov’s huge advantage is his status as a Nobel laureate. With such a status, even in our country you can argue with anyone, which Alferov sometimes does. But he also has a huge disadvantage - his age (83 years). By the way, at the bureau of the physical sciences department, one of the members recalled that Alferov, in the elections before last, explained his refusal to run for office precisely because of his age. Ten years have passed...

Fortov does not have this status, but according to bibliometric indicators he is only slightly inferior to Alferov, and taking into account the difference in age, he is not inferior at all. The full citation index for Alferov and Fortov is, respectively, 13203 and 10580, the Hirsch index is 53 and 46. Fortov greatly benefits in the number of citations to recent works (the last 7 years): 1677 versus 35 for Alferov. Of course, all these numbers are not only their own, but also the team’s result. Thus, minus the Nobel Prize, the scientific status of the two leading candidates is of the same order.

The following candidates are significantly inferior in bibliometrics. There are 676 references to Osipov’s works, dozens to Nekipelov’s works.

Fortov’s advantage, besides the sixteen-year age difference with Alferov, is his reformist attitude. Even at the last elections, he spoke about the need for significant changes, in particular that the Academy of Sciences should be turned towards scientific workers. It is difficult to say anything optimistic about the reform abilities of the 83-year-old candidate; there is no need to talk about the other two candidates in this aspect, since they have been determining the policy of the Russian Academy of Sciences for many years. Of course, the reformist attitude is a plus in the eyes of not all academicians, but more and more of them understand that without self-reform, the Academy of Sciences will face a pitiful fate.

There are persistent rumors that Osipov is going to withdraw his candidacy. Whether this is true or not, his chances this time are slim. The same can be said about Nekipelov - he is a pure official from science, and it is impossible to imagine that members of natural science departments will vote for him en masse. The main fight, apparently, will unfold between Alferov and Fortov, and at the moment Fortov is in the lead. Leadership lies not only in the number of departments that nominated it, but also in the fact that it was nominated by the strongest natural science departments, where the vast majority of world-famous Russian scientists are concentrated.

True, there will be one more stage before the elections: the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences will have to name its favorite, which does not have any organizational consequences, but may affect the vote. This is a complex system, but these are probably the only elections in the country that remain real.