Leningrad Academy of Timber Technology

(full name, S. M. Kirov Leningrad Academy of Timber Technology), one of the world’s oldest higher schools of timber technology. It was founded in 1803 as the Forestry School (Institute) and became the Leningrad Academy of Timber Technology in 1929. It was named after S. M. Kirov in 1935.

The establishment and development of the academy’s schools is associated with such well-known scientists and public figures as D. A. Lachinov, A. N. Engel’gardt, P. A. Kostychev, D. N. Kaigorodov, M. G. Kucherov, D. M. Kravchinskii, M. M. Orlov, M. E. Tkachenko, and G. F. Morozov; Academicians I. P. Borodin, K. K. Gedroits, N. A. Maksimov, V. N. Sukachev, and V. N. Obolenskii; and Corresponding Members of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR N. I. Nikitin and L. A. Ivanov.

The Leningrad Academy of Timber Technology has (1973) departments of engineering and economics, forestry, chemical technology, mechanization, timber technology, forest mechanics, and forest engineering. There are evening, correspondence, and preparatory divisions; postgraduate programs; courses for the advanced training of specialists; 54 subdepartments; two scientific research institutes operating on a voluntary basis; seven special problems and three sectorial laboratories; two training and experimental forestry sections (33,500 hectares); and a botanical garden. The academy has a branch in Syktyvkar. The library has 1.2 million volumes.

In the 1972–73 academic year, 12,000 students were in attendance. There were more than 1,100 teachers and researchers, including more than 50 professors and doctors of sciences, and 400 docents and candidates of sciences. The academy is empowered to accept doctoral and candidate’s dissertations for defense. Nauchnye trudy (Transactions) were published by the academy from 1898 to 1971, and interschool collections on forest specialties have been published since 1971. The Leningrad Academy of Timber Technology (Forest Institute) has trained more than 45,000 specialists since it was founded. It was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1953.