Moscow Physical Engineering Institute

one of the leading educational and research institutions of the USSR for the newest branches of physics, mathematics, and power engineering. Established in 1942 as the Moscow Mechanics Institute; a department of engineering and physics was organized in 1945, and the institute received its present name in 1953.

As of 1973, the institute had departments of theoretical and experimental physics, physical engineering, automation and electronics, and cybernetics; a special department of physics (a higher school for physicists), for students at other higher educational institutions who have demonstrated an outstanding aptitude for scientific work (studies in this department are conducted under the auspices of the Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and the Moscow Physical Engineering Institute); a department for advanced training of physics teachers in higher educational institutions; an all-Union school of theoretical nuclear physics for young scientists, held annually in cooperation with the Academy of Sciences of the USSR; a graduate school; a preparatory division; and one of the first physics and mathematics schools in the country for advanced secondary-school students. The institute also had 37 subdepartments, ten special-problems and sectorial laboratories, the IRT-2000 atomic reactor, a linear electron accelerator laboratory, a computer center, and a television studio for broadcasts on the teaching of mathematics and physics (the third program of Central Television Broadcasts). There were about 500, 000 volumes in the library.

In the 1973–74 academic year about 7, 000 students were studying at the institute. There were more than 700 teachers and scientists, including ten academicians and corresponding members of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, about 100 professors and doctors of sciences, about 400 docents and candidates of sciences, and more than 20 laureates of the Lenin Prize or the State Prize of the USSR. The institute confers candidate’s and doctoral degrees. Topical symposia of the institute’s scientific work are published.

Among the graduates of the institute are the prominent Soviet scientists N. G. Basov, Iu. M. Kagan, L. B. Okun’, A. M. Baldin, B. A. Dolgoshein, P. I. Popov, A. A. Vasenkov, and V. G. Kirillov-Ugriumov and the cosmonaut N. N. Rukavishnikov. In 1967 the institute was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.