Moscow Physicotechnical Institute

the leading higher educational institution in the USSR for training research specialists in the newest branches of physics, mathematics, and technology. It was founded in 1951 from the physicotechnical department (founded 1946) of the M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University.

As of 1973, the institute had departments of radio engineering and cybernetics, general and applied physics, aerophysics and space research, chemical and molecular physics, physical and quantum electronics, aeromechanics and aircraft engineering, control, and applied mathematics. The system of training research engineers at the institute integrates the learning process and the research work of the students; it is organized on the basis of the leading institutes of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, as well as the institutes and design bureaus of ministries and departments (the P. N. Lebedev Institute of Physics, the S. I. Vavilov Institute for Physical Problems, the Institute of Chemical Physics, the Institute of Problems of Control, the Computer Center, the Institute of Applied Mathematics, the Institute of Space Research, the I. V. Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, and the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics). Instruction is provided by 18 academicians and 32 corresponding members of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, together with more than 200 professors and doctors of sciences.

The students at the institute receive a fundamental general-theoretical and engineering education, and they study two foreign languages. In the associated institutes, the students enter a special training cycle. The diploma projects that conclude the students’ research work at the associated institutes are usually part of the program of the institute’s scientific studies. The activity of the Moscow Physicotechnical Institute, the associated institutes, and the design bureaus in the training of specialists is coordinated by a council headed by Academician P. L. Kapitsa, and the members of the presidium are Academicians A. A. Do-rodnitsyn, V. A. Kotel’nikov, M. A. Lavrent’ev, S. A. Lebedev, and N. N. Semenov.

The institute has a correspondence physicotechnical school in which pupils in the eighth to tenth grades are studying (about 40 percent of the students are from remote areas). The institute takes an active part in conducting the all-Union school olympiads for physics and mathematics. It was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor in 1967.